


i'll speak a little louder, i'll even shout

by theparadigmshifts



Series: more light [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: (to his friends), Adult Losers Club (IT), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Mike Hanlon Deserves Nice Things, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Phone Calls & Telephones, Richie Tozier Comes Out, Slow Burn, Stanley Uris Lives, Texting, The Losers Club (IT) Love Each Other, adrian is also alive idk how and i don't mention it but i just wanted you to know, lol, richie and patty brotp, richie fucks off with mike to florida briefly, straight bill denbrough, two mustards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:48:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22704961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theparadigmshifts/pseuds/theparadigmshifts
Summary: “If you were in LA, I’d invite myself over to your apartment, and bring you bad takeout, and we could have like, a movie night.”Eddie huffs a quiet laugh. “What, would you climb through my window?”“Nah, dude, we’re forty, I’d use the front fuckin’ door,” he says, gratified to hear Eddie’s snort of laughter on the other end of the line. “You’d be on the top floor anyway. Penthouse shit. I’d fall and break my skull open trying to get in.”“No you wouldn’t,” Eddie says. “Your head’s like titanium. Thickest skull around.”“You’re the worst,” Richie whines. “Be nice to me when I’m bleeding out on the ground outside your beautiful Los Angeles apartment. Cradle me.”“I can’t,” Eddie says. “You’re too heavy.”“Guess I’m not allowed to die, then,” Richie says.“Nope. Not ever.” Eddie pauses. “You’re still allowed to crawl in my window, though. You’re the only one who ever was.”--Richie catches up on a few decades' worth of phone calls.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Patricia Blum Uris/Stanley Uris
Series: more light [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1632832
Comments: 131
Kudos: 1323





	i'll speak a little louder, i'll even shout

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to larne for repeatedly saying “you’re overthinking this” and for being so eddie that she actually did text me about my checked bag, to kat for being a perpetual cheerleader and putting up with my endless weird stream of consciousness, and to paige for the stanpat and benverly sex jokes. I love ya’ll 
> 
> this picks up where "nor rivers drown it" leaves off.

Everyone lingers. And that’s objectively crazy, Richie wants to say, because this dumbfuck murder town is ground zero for the worst newly-remembered traumas of their entire lives. But it’s also the place where they all met each other, and there’s something to the idea that that’s the thing that wins out. Not the clown. Not the homophobia or the racism or the bullying. Each other. 

Everyone’s sitting around Richie’s room, sleepover style, leaning against each other for warmth. They can’t stop throwing memories around, now that they’ve got them back. They don’t come back slowly, or all at once; it’s more like they’ve been in their heads the whole time, covered with a sheet, and now the sheet is gone, and they can see what’s underneath, if they just think to look. 

When Patty and Stan go back to their room, Richie stage whispers “they’re gonna go have sex,” and Stan lets out a long-suffering sigh, and Patty just winks with her whole face, overly dramatic, and Richie loves her for it. 

"Do we think Stan gets pegged?" he says into the contented silence of the room once they’re gone like he's hurling a grenade. Everyone shrieks at him, overlapping.

"God, why w-w-would you SAY that -" 

"Beep beep, Richie -"

"Beep FUCKING beep!" 

Bev just laughs. 

"I mean…" Ben says, thoughtfully. 

"BEN! NO!" Bill laughs, and Ben turns red with laughing, covering his face with his hands. 

Mike and Bill fall asleep on the floor, and Bev at the foot of the bed until Ben carries her out gently, and Eddie, Eddie, _Eddie_ \- 

Eddie’s leaning against the headboard, letting out a yawn so big his whole tiny body curls with it, and it’s the cutest thing Richie’s ever seen in his life. 

“Past your bedtime, shortstack?” Richie asks. 

“Asshole,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat to it. “I am -”

“Five-nine, perfectly average height, yeah, I’ve heard that one before,” he shoots back, and Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. 

“What?” Richie asks. 

“I just…” Eddie pauses, searching Richie’s face for something. Richie isn’t sure if he finds it or not, but he freezes, barely remembering to breathe, just to give him more time to look for it. Eddie leans back and stares up at the ceiling, fingers making lazy little patterns on the comforter. He’s always in motion, even now. He’s not the same. Of course he’s not. But Richie wants to look at him until he memorizes this version of his face, big brown eyes and crows’ feet and dimples and freckles and frown lines. 

“I need to leave my wife,” Eddie blurts out, all in a rush, and Richie is so stunned that he almost falls off the bed. He can’t even make a joke about Eddie’s train of thought derailing.

“What?” he chokes out. 

“Sorry, I just, uh…” Eddie still isn’t looking at him. He scrubs a hand over his face, and Richie notices that he’s not wearing his ring anymore. “Fuck.” 

“Take your time, Spaghetti Man,” Richie says. Eddie groans. 

“I didn’t… I didn’t even know what kind of person I was,” he says. “I think that when I forgot all of you, I forgot that I was supposed to... enjoy my life. I forgot I was _allowed_ to.” 

“That is... extremely depressing,” Richie says. 

“I know!” he hisses. “I know, I just - you fucking hear guys being like, oh yeah, the old ball and chain, oh yeah, I hate my wife. You know - the kind of shit you have in literally all of your standup.” 

“I didn’t know you were such a fan.” 

“Oh, shut up."

“I can’t even be mad. You’re right.” 

“Oh? I’m what?” 

“I will not say it again. Keep going, you’re gonna fall asleep before you finish talking. Ball and chain.” 

“Ball and chain. The whole time I was just like… Alright, so people must be fucking lying about like, love and romance and shit. It must be like this for everyone. Putting up with each other. Making each other a little bit worse. Getting married was the thing that I did because I was supposed to do it, but I fucking… I’m looking at Stan and Patty looking at each other like that, and knowing each other the way they do, and it hits me like a fucking freight train, like. Oh. Oh, it’s all real. This whole time, it’s been real, and _I’ve_ been the one who’s lying.” 

“Fuck,” Richie says, quietly.

He turns to look at Richie again, and Richie has to pretend that he hasn’t been staring. “I can’t believe I just fuckin’, word vomited all over you.” 

“Yeah, vomit is usually _my_ thing.”

“That’s literally so disgusting. Please stop.” 

Richie starts making gagging noises, and he’s leaning in with his tongue out before he overthinks it. “Richie, stop!” Eddie whines, and he almost sounds the way he did when they were thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, and Eddie tries to push him away but accidentally lets his hand touch Richie’s tongue, and Eddie recoils in horror, and Richie laughs.

"Can you two stop," Mike mumbles from across the room.

"Yeah, Eddie," Richie whispers. "You're being so disruptive."

"I'm being disruptive??" he says, full volume. Bill and Mike shush them from the floor, and Eddie frowns, shifting like he's going to get up. 

“Eddie, baby, come back, I’m sorry,” Richie croons. The nickname feels a little too honest as it comes out of his mouth, nothing at all like the way it sounded when they were kids. 

“Only because I’m too tired to get up,” Eddie mutters. Richie sees his eyelids start to flutter as he shifts around, and he knows he could leave the moment like this, barf jokes and hand licking, but he doesn’t. 

“I’m proud of you, man,” he says. 

“Hm?” 

“Getting a divorce. Changing your life. Moving and shaking.”

“One thing at a time,” he says. 

“Alright. Step one. Get a divorce.” 

“Thanks,” he says. “What about you?” 

“What _about_ me?” Richie dodges. “No, I don’t think I need to leave my nonexistent mom-wife that I was never really in love with.” 

“Get fucked,” Eddie says. You know what I mean.”

 _I’m not built for relationships,_ Richie had always thought, even though it was such a deadbeat dude kind of thing to say. He’d never been in a real relationship. It hadn’t felt fair to the women he’d tried to date, or the men he wouldn’t come out for. _Gay panic aside_ , he thought, _I am missing some key component here that everyone else seems to understand._

But when he looks at Eddie, now, he remembers that there’s this vast, glittering lake inside of him, right under the surface of his skin. He’s not even surprised by it. He just thinks, _oh. Oh, this whole time, I had all this love inside of me. This whole time, I have been desperate to put it to use._

“I _do_ know what you mean,” Richie says, throat suddenly dry. 

“You always kind of did,” Eddie says, a little muzzily. He scoots a little closer to Richie, and Richie wants to crawl out of his skin. “That’s nice. I felt like I wasn’t making any sense.” 

Richie tries to laugh, but it comes out a little bit strangled. “No, it makes a lot of sense. I get it. I’m the biggest phony around, remember?” 

“Nah,” Eddie says, head nodding. “You’re real, Richie.”

And fuck him, but that does something to him, makes his stomach flip like he’s actually going to be sick. He can feel the warmth radiating from where Eddie’s leg is pressed against his, hip to hip, thigh to thigh. But before he can figure out how to respond, Eddie’s breathing evens out, and he falls asleep on Richie’s shoulder. 

He looks ten times younger like this, frown lines smoothed out. Richie can map the line, now, connect the dots between baby Eddie and high school Eddie and the Eddie right next to him. He can imagine twenties Eddie, too, thirties Eddie, miserable and overworked. And Richie knew he was in danger the fucking second he saw Eddie smile nervously at him across the restaurant, but he’s not in danger anymore. No sir. He’s already fallen down the ravine, or drowned in the lake, or whatever fucking metaphor for love he’s supposed to use right now. Because - it is love, impossibly. It’s insane to think that it could be, after decades apart, but he watches Eddie now, shifting in his sleep to curl his hand into the crook of Richie’s arm, and he’s hit with a wave of longing so strong he has to stop looking at him. 

This small touch is the most action he’s gotten in years, he thinks, this curling of fingers across his bicep. Not sex, quick and shameful and perfunctory. Intimacy. Affection. Has he ever been held - really held, like he’s something that someone actually doesn’t want to let go of? And he can feel a lump forming in his throat, which is _fucking_ embarrassing, so he tries to turn it over in his head into something that looks like a joke, imagines saying it into a mic in one of the clubs he used to tell jokes at when he was 22 and hungry and swiss-cheese-brained. _Yeah, I jerk off to the idea of being held_. _One time I thought about someone tenderly stroking my hair and I almost blacked out_. But it’s still too honest, too pathetic, in a way that makes him burn. That’s the thing about all of this, Richie thinks: the ghostwriter had been a relief, when he’d come, because Richie’s never actually been all that good at telling jokes. He really just tells the truth. 

When he wakes up the next morning, Eddie is curled away from him in a compact little comma, toward the wall, and Richie wants to smooth the hair out of his face and tease out the curls he knows are still there, cover him with his own body, and Richie feels that deep, familiar guilt for… well. For wanting. 

_Alright_ , he thinks. _Well, this is gonna be a fucking problem_. So he does what he always does when the inside of his brain gets too unbearable: he gets up and finds someone else to distract him.

* * *

One day turns into three, then five. They barely let each other out of their sight. Mike goes back to his place to pack a bag and comes back to the townhouse with an entire car full of personal belongings, like he started packing an overnight bag and then remembered halfway through that he didn’t want to stay in Derry at all. 

“Whoa, Mikey,” Richie says. “You’ve got almost as much stuff as Eddie does.” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie mumbles. 

Eddie tries to leave on day five, ranting about all the shit that he has to take care of, mentioning that he should really get going after breakfast, then after lunch. He hugs everyone at the restaurant, and gets to Richie, and his fingers twitch with hesitation, so Richie pulls him in before he can second guess himself, trying not to think about the way Eddie’s head fits right under his chin. 

And he remembers, then, the way that they’d clung to each other the night before Eddie left for college, the way that their sadness had been pulled out from under them in a sudden undertow of scrabbling panic. _This is the last time you’re going to see him_ , Richie had thought, and he hadn’t known why he’d thought it, but he’d gripped him tighter and thought _I’ll just keep holding onto him, then. I just won’t let him go_. But he had, and he’d seen the tears in Eddie’s eyes when he did, and he’d known that Eddie was feeling the exact same fear. 

When they break apart this time, Eddie’s looking at him with the same expression he’d had on his face all those years ago. “Rich -” he says, and at the same time, Richie says “are you sure you have to leave today?” 

And it’s almost as embarrassing as if he’d begged him to stay, and Richie expects Eddie to say, _yeah, dipshit, I’m sure._ But he doesn’t. He shifts from foot to foot, and he says, “I guess it’s too late to go today. I still have to pack, and I really shouldn’t be driving at night. More than 40 percent of fatal car accidents happen at night.” 

Richie’s chest floods with relief. “Doesn’t that mean that 60 percent still happen during the day, then? What’s their excuse?” 

“Oh my God, Richie, that isn’t how it works. Do I have to explain it to you?” 

And because all Richie wants is to hear his voice, he grins, and says, “Yeah, G-man, I guess you do.” 

* * *

When it’s been a week, everyone starts to make plans. Stan and Bill help Mike plan the first leg of his trip, excitedly offering (extremely boring) travel tips. Ben and Bev browse dog adoption sites. Patty books tickets back to Atlanta for her and Stan, and Richie tries to close her browser tab so they won’t leave, and they all fight over the computer until Stan yells “I need to start therapy, asshole! We need to sleep in our own bed!” 

“Oh, to -”

“To fuck? Yes, Richie! Yes! We would like to have sex without wondering if you assholes can hear us through the walls!”

Patty laughs so hard she chokes, and Stan rubs her back, concern on his face, until she coughs out, “you lose - hold on - you losers have been cockblocking us!” 

And then they’re all hugging goodbye in the lobby for real. For a second Richie feels that same flash of terror, but he knows that it’s different this time. It’s over. They’re going to remember everything. 

“Call us as soon as you get back home,” he says to Stan, anyway, pulling him into a tight hug. 

“Okay, Mom,” Stan scoffs.

“Shut up,” Richie laughs.

Stan softens. “We will. Love you, Richie.” 

“God, are we the kind of people who all say _I love you_ to each other, now?” Richie says. “This is the most emotional support I’ve gotten in thirty years. It’s like a feelings-bra” 

“Does he mean that?” Patty asks. “Please tell me he doesn’t mean that.” 

“I love you, too, Stanley the Manly,” Richie says. He pulls Patty into a hug next, feeling warm. “Patty Cake, meeting you might have been the highlight of this whole nightmare. I’m buying you one of those necklaces that comes apart in the middle. Best friends forever."

"You're saying that like you're joking, but I have your number now, I'm going to use it," Patty laughs. "I'm gonna call you every time I want to meet a celebrity." 

"I _am_ a celebrity," Richie says.

"No, like... real ones," Patty grins. 

"Patsy!" Richie laughs, too tickled to be affronted. 

"Richigan!" Patty returns. 

"Oh my God," Richie says. He feels tears pooling in his eyes.

"Like, Michigan? Listen, I know it's not my best work, but -"

"Shut up, Patty Blum Uris, I'm going to cherish it forever," Richie says. "No one ever gives _me_ nicknames!" 

"We call you Trashmouth," Stan points out. 

"That doesn't count," Richie says.

"I mean this in the nicest way," Mike says, raising his eyebrows. "But Richie and Patty really are two peas in a pod." 

"That's so mean!" Bev says. "How could you say that to poor Patty!" 

The look on Stan's face is too priceless for Richie not to break down laughing again. 

"We're leaving," Stan says. "I can't look at you one second longer."

Patty grins. "We'll see you all for Thanksgiving," she says. 

Ben and Bev leave the next day in a haze of honeymoon love, and Richie loves them both too much to be jealous. Bill takes off for London, because he’s still got a marriage he actually wants to work on, and Eddie takes the cue to go back to New York. 

Richie doesn't hug Eddie goodbye, but Eddie hugs him, quick and strong, and Richie fights the urge to bury his nose in his hair, kiss the top of his stupid head. 

"What's next?" he asks. 

"You know? I don't know," Eddie says breathlessly. And Eddie's looking up at him with an expression he hasn't seen on his face this whole time, something close to anticipation. And Richie wants to say something stupid, like _come to LA, I've got a big, empty place that's gonna feel even emptier when I'm back there,_ or _let me follow you to New York,_ or _who gives a shit as long as I'm in the same place that you are._

But instead, he puts his hands in his pockets so he won't touch him. "The world's your oyster, Eds.” 

"Don't call me that,” he says, reflexively, in a way that makes both of them hide their smiles. "But, uh, I guess it is. Thanks, Rich." He puts his hand on his suitcase handle. "See you in four months?"

"Not if i see you first," Richie says, stupidly.

"What?" Eddie laughs. 

"I don't know," Richie laughs back. "Shut up. See you." 

"Dumbass," Eddie calls.

"Dipshit," Richie shouts back. He pulls out his phone, tapping out a quick message. 

_try not to crash your car this time_

Eddie rolls down the window of his dumb boat of a car and sticks his head out. "I haven't even left the parking lot yet! Stop texting me!" 

"I missed you!" Richie whines. 

Eddie just shakes his head, rolling up the window, but Richie can see him smiling through the glass.

Spaghetti

_you know sixty percent of accidents happen during the day time… that's when the sun god saps the power from your body and puts you in his thrall_ _  
__ps your car is stupid_ _  
__we get it, you're overcompensating_

And his phone buzzes with an incoming call, then, and it's better than fucking Christmas.

"Aw, baby," he says. "You missed me too?"

"Don't call me that either!" Eddie splutters across the line. 

And because Richie’s always been too stupid to quit a bit, he leans into it, instead. “To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing your beautiful voice, Eddie, baby? Eddie, my love?” 

“Stop distracting me,” Eddie says. Richie watches his car roll to a stop at the edge of the parking lot and fondness bubbles up so far in his chest that he feels like he’s going to choke on it, like a dreamy sort of acid reflux.

“Stop talking on the phone while you’re driving,” Richie shoots back. 

“I’m - oh, right! You asshole! I can’t fucking believe you’d accuse _me_ of overcompensating when you showed up here in your stupid bright red midlife-crisis-mobile!” 

Richie chortles. 

“What, you just wanna broadcast that you’ve got a small dick? You think women are gonna be impressed by that shit?” 

“Eddie, you’re the only one I want to impress,” Richie says. His heart thunders in his throat, and he swallows. 

“I’m not impressed,” Eddie says, after a beat that feels a year long. 

“Hm, I’ll get it next time.” Eddie’s car is still idling in the parking lot. Richie rubs his forehead. “Get out of here, dummy. Go leave your wife.” 

“Bye, Rich,” Eddie says. Richie watches his car pull out, lifting a hand. He hangs up the phone. 

* * *

Richie goes home with Mike, and there’s some kind of joke to be made there (Mike’s objectively hot, but _gentle farm boy_ had never been his type in the way _tiny feral hypochondriac_ had). When Mike says, “I’ve gotta pack a few more things up before I leave,” Richie says, “do you want a hand?” 

Richie’s just grateful for the company, and for the way that Mike doesn’t ask him, _hey, Richie, what the hell are you still doing in Maine?_ He helps Mike cover the furniture, tries not to break any of his shit. 

“See, I’m helpful,” Richie says. He puts on a British butler voice. “Are you in need of a valet for your travels, my good sir?” 

Mike laughs. “I hate to say that your voices are better, but they really are better,” he says. 

“Aw, shucks,” says Richie, genuinely pleased. 

“I always wondered why you never got into voice acting,” Mike says, thoughtfully. “I watched all of your specials, and -”

“You gonna rag on me too for not writing my own shit, Mikey?” 

He shrugs. “No, it’s not like I could tell. Not like Eddie could.” 

And Richie doesn’t want to touch _that_ with a ten foot pole, so he doesn’t say anything at all. Mike leans back, looks at him in a way that makes Richie feel a little bit too seen, too studied. 

“Hey, Rich?” 

“Yeah, man?” 

“Were you trying to ask me if you could come to Florida with me?” 

“Can I?” Richie blurts out, too fast, and he hates how vulnerable it sounds, but he can’t - he can’t go back to LA. Not yet. Not now. 

“Yeah, man, of course,” Mike says, nudging him with his shoulder. “Not to be pathetic, here - I want to get the hell out of Derry, you know I do… but I don’t think I want to be alone quite yet, you know?” 

Richie sags with relief. “Yeah, yes, exactly,” he says. “Exactly. Stan has Patty, and Bill has Audra, and Bev and Ben have each other, and Eddie’s got shit back in New York, but, I just - I can’t -”

“Yeah,” Mike says, kindly. “I get it.” 

Richie loves him for understanding, for giving him ways to say the things that he wants to say by acting like they’re his idea. It’s generous - that’s the word. And Mike has always been generous. He’d given them his farm for bonfires and sleepovers and camping under the stars, even when they bickered and teased each other, even when Bev had gotten drunk enough to try to commandeer one of the tractors, and even when Eddie had found a tick behind his ear and had launched into the mother of all meltdowns. Mike had just sighed, put his hand on Eddie’s chest when he started hyperventilating, and said, “breathe with me, Eddie. There ya go.” 

Mike gave them the chance to go out into the world to live their own lives at the expense of his own. Mike swings his chest wide open, over and over again, to let them have his heart, and Richie doesn’t know how he does it. Richie doesn’t know how to offer up a part of himself without being gripped by the fear that it’s going to be crushed. 

“You’re the best of us, Mike,” Richie says. “You know that, right?” Mike looks at him, surprised, and Richie can see him preparing to argue, so he holds up a hand. “I know, I know, Ben’s pretty loveable, too. But we kind of owe you everything.” 

“You’re - you aren’t upset that I lied?” Mike asks. And it’s such a ridiculous thing to say that Richie barks out a laugh. 

“Are you kidding, dude? You were the only one standing up to that stupid fucking clown. The rest of us were ready to be like, _fuck Derry’s future kids_ , but you - you’re a goddamn superhero.” 

There are tears pooling in Mike’s eyes. “Oh, God,” Richie says. “I’m sorry, please don’t cry, I’m not gonna know what to say.” 

“You’d cry, too,” says Mike, with a wet laugh. 

“Shut up, man!” Richie laughs. 

“You were a mess at graduation. Snot everywhere.”

“You know, it’s really annoying that you never forgot that.”

“It’s really good to have you all back,” Mike says, softly. 

“I was always amazed at your ability to put up with our bullshit, Mikey.” 

Mike shakes his head. “I never put up with anything, Richie. I loved you guys. I still do.” 

And Richie never feels like he knows what to do with any of his limbs at any given moment, but he pulls Mike into a hug, and Mike clings to him like a lifeline, so he figures that for once, he’s done something right. 

Richie’s phone buzzes once, then again, and again. Mike pulls back and nods. “You gonna get that?” 

“Not if it’s my manager,” Richie says, pulling his phone out. 

Spaghetti 

**_Hey Richie  
_ ** **_I need to leave Myra_ **

_is there a question in here somewhere_

**_Right?  
_ ** **_Shut up, dude, I just  
_ ** **_I uh, need you to remind me  
_ ** **_Because I had so many reasons and it’s like they just vanished  
_ ** **_I feel like I’m crazy_ **

_youre not crazy  
_ _i mean you are a little crazy but not about this_

**_Thanks so much_ **

_you need to leave your wife because you told me that you did  
_ _and also you don’t love her  
_ _and probably a lot of other shit? idk eds_

**_Don’t call me that_ **

_where are you now_

**_I’m back home  
_ ** **_I’m in the bathroom_ **

_having crippling diarrhea or hiding from your wife?_

**_...I don’t know why I thought texting you would help_ **

_eddieeeeeeeee  
_ _come backkkkk  
_ _idk, you just… you gotta trust yourself here_

Richie knows he’s out of his depth. _You aren’t what Eddie needs right now_ , he thinks. _It’s not like you know jack shit about marriage._ But they’re all part of a _unit_ , now. He can call in reinforcements.

He scrolls through his contacts and hits call. 

“Hey, Richie,” Bev answers. “You miss us already?” 

“Obviously, Red,” he says. _Bev?_ Mike mouths. Richie nods. 

“Hi, Bev!” Mike shouts. 

“Hi, Mike!” Bev shouts back, so loud Richie has to pull the phone away from his ear. “Hi Mike and Richie!” Ben calls, faintly, in the background. 

“Put us on speaker,” Bev says. 

“No, I’ll just be like, one second.” 

“What’s up?” 

“Can you call Eddie right now?” Richie asks. “He needs someone to talk to who gets what he’s going through, and I know that you’ve… been through it.” 

“Yeah,” Bev says softly. “Yes, absolutely. I’ll call now.” 

“Bye, Miss Martian.”

“Bye, Richie. We love you. Tell Mike we love him, too!” 

“Geez, fine, okay,” Richie says. He pauses. “Love you, too.” 

It’s midnight when Richie’s phone buzzes again, after Richie’s booked a seat on Mike’s flight, and Mike’s gone to bed, and Richie’s trying to get comfortable on his old, lumpy couch. 

Spaghetti 

**_Did you tell Bev to call me?_ **

_well that depends_

**_On what?_ **

_on if you’re pissed off that i did it or not_

**_I’m not pissed off  
_ ** **_It’s exactly what I needed._ **

_okay good_

**_Thank you_ **

_it was nothing_

**_No, it wasn’t. Not really_ **

_hey do you remember when we went camping at mike’s and you found a tick behind your ear_

**_I DO NOW  
_ ** **_WHY WOULD YOU REMIND ME OF THAT, ASSHOLE???  
_ ** **_Oh my God, that was so traumatic  
_ ** **_I thought I was gonna die_ **

_hahahaha_

**_You pulled it off with your fingers!!_ **

_yeah what else was i gonna do??_

**_Ticks can regurgitate diseases into your body if you pull them out incorrectly1!!_ **

_hm but did you get any diseases_

**_Who’s to say_ **

_i thought not  
_ _i was your hero_

 **_You wish  
_ ** **_What made you think about that?_ **

_hanging out with mike_

**_Ah, right  
_** ** _Still?_**

_yeah, we’re going to florida  
_ _i think we’re going to be very happy together_

**_Shut the FUCK up_ **

_night, spaghetti_

**_Night, Richie_ **

* * *

“I feel like I should be wearing one of your shirts right now,” Mike says. They’re in Key West, and Mike had been so excited talking about the Ernest Hemingway Home that Richie had allowed himself to be dragged along all day. Mike had read every placard while Richie had taunted the freaky, six-toed cats until one of them had scratched him. _It’s gonna get infected, dipshit!_ he hears Eddie scream in his head, sees him chop his hand jerkily in his mind’s eye. It’s dreamy. Richie has brain worms. 

They’re on the beach, now, Richie scrolling through his phone and Mike reading one of Bill’s novels. He’s told Steve that he’s alive, sent him a news article about Bowers, and then proceeded to ignore all of the increasingly incensed messages coming in. 

“That’s because you should be,” Richie says. “We can send everyone a selfie.” 

A woman walking down the beach hand-in-hand with her husband gives them a little smile as she passes, and it’s nice, but it also makes Richie feel like his throat is stuffed with cotton. Someone had mistaken him and Mike for a couple the day before, and Mike had just laughed, and it had taken Richie a beat too long to make a joke about it, to say, “are you kidding me, this guy’s way out of my league!” 

Richie’s still thinking about it, the idea that someone could look at him and - and _know_. He wonders if any of the losers have figured it out. He has no idea if he wants them to have guessed or not. He’s spent a lifetime not-so-carefully building a person who doesn’t _seem_ gay, whatever that means. His jokes about women have always been a little too loud, a little too desperate. Eddie had looked triumphant back at the Jade, had said _I fucking knew it! I fucking knew it!_ And the idea that someone would be able to look past the cardboard cutout of a straight man to see him crouching down behind it fills him with as much anticipation as terror. _Pay no attention to the gay behind the curtain_ , he thinks, nonsensically. 

But here’s the thing that he didn’t expect. After everything that’s happened, keeping up the facade doesn’t feel like habit, or second nature. It feels like dragging around a corpse, like walking around in concrete shoes. Is Richie still terrified? Sure. Obviously. But more than that, he’s just… he’s really fucking tired. He likes men. He _knows_ he likes men. He’s known since he was thirteen, walking a little too close to Eddie so that their hands could “accidentally” brush. He’s spent so long trying to keep this thing inside him that it’s festered. And lancing a boil hurts for a second, but then it - well, it heals. 

He looks over at Mike, sunglasses on his forehead, eyebrows scrunched up as he turns the page. He imagines just spitting the words out, then thinks about how weird that would be to blurt out here on the beach with absolutely no context. He turns it over in his head. _Hey, Mike, can I tell you something? I’ve been terrified to vocalize it my entire goddamn life because I’ve convinced myself that I’m never going to find love, and I grew up in this shitty bigoted town in the middle of the AIDS crisis - oh, you remember Derry? You grew up in Derry too? Derry, that town where white supremacists tried to beat you up on the reg? Oh, that’s right. Yeah. Anyway, I’m gay_. 

“Richie?” Mike says. 

“Shirt!” Richie shouts, standing up. “Be right back.” 

* * *

“Where are we off to next, Mikey?” Richie asks, a few days later. Mike gives him a look that’s a little hard to parse. 

“I’ve been talking to one of my online friends who lives in Miami,” Mike says. “And I think I’m going to go visit her in person.” 

“Online friends?” Richie says. “Have you been trawling message boards about ancient lore? You’re a regular Fox Mulder.” 

Mike rolls his eyes. “Librarian Twitter is a thing, Richie. I’ve actually made a lot of friends there.” 

“Of course you have,” Richie says, because Mike has made friends everywhere they’ve gone this week. There isn’t a stranger they haven’t talked to. Richie is good at making the kinds of friends you get absolutely hammered with at a dive bar at three in the morning, who dare you to do a backflip off the bartop, who have big brown eyes that make you, inexplicably, want to show off for them, so why not find out if you can stick the landing? 

But Mike is the kind of person strangers on the bus tell their entire life stories to. Richie had come back to the hotel lobby after five minutes in the bathroom to find Mike nodding seriously while an old woman began to cry, reaching out and taking her hands and saying “that sounds so hard, but you’ve lived such an amazing life. You’ve overcome so much.” 

“What’s this librarian lady like, then?” Richie asks. “You gonna find your Scully?” 

“No, I don’t think so,” Mike says. He’s quiet, for a second. “I think all of you are my Scully.” 

He thinks of Mike, alone in Derry, the lone believer to a crowd full of skeptics. “Aw. Mike.” 

“No, I think…” he trails off. “I’m trying to figure out how to put this. I’ve been lonely for a long time, but I don’t think it’s because I’m not in a relationship. Romantically, I mean. I’m not sure that it’s something I even want, just loving one person in that way. I know it’s different, obviously, but I have all of you. And now I have a whole world of people, too. And that’s enough, to be able to give my love to people the way that I do.” 

“Wow,” Richie says. “Why is Bill the writer, you should be giving him tips.” 

“I am,” Mike laughs. Bill had Skyped them both from London, and before long, he and Mike were shooting ideas back and forth, bouncing off each other excitedly. Richie had interjected every few minutes with the dumbest plot twists he could possibly think of. When Bill had said “huh, actually, R-Richie, maybe the m-m-mother _was_ the zombie th-the entire time,” Richie had known he’d gone too far. 

“So if I’m not crashing a librarian date…” Richie says, hopefully.

“Richie…” Mike says. Richie winces. “You know I’ve loved spending this time with you, but do you think, at this point, you might be trying to avoid your responsibilities?” 

“What responsibilities?” he says. “My career’s already crashed and burned. There were several casualties. Actually, just one casualty, you’re looking at him.” 

Mike raises his eyebrows. “Richie.” 

“Yeah?” 

“I think you should call your manager back.” 

* * *

Richie goes back to LA, finally. The way he’s rocketed from self-sufficient to clingy in just a few weeks embarrasses him on a bone-deep level. He cried at the airport when he said goodbye to Mike. He boarded the plane, thought about spending six hours with his own thoughts, and immediately bought the in-flight WiFi so that he could message the newly minted Losers group chat. 

His phone buzzes, but it’s not a message from the group; Eddie’s texting him directly. He tries to ignore the way his heart flops around in his chest like a dying fish. 

Spaghetti 

**_Wait how are you texting from the plane_ **

_eddie, baby… ru serious_

**_Yes??_ **

_i bought the wifi, i missed you guys too much :( :( :(_

**_Oh right_ **

_you’re one of those people who thinks that the plane is gonna crash if you don’t turn your phone to airplane mode, arent you_

**_It interferes with the signal, Richie!!!_ **

_no it doesn’t!! that’s just a scam!_

**_I’m looking this up right now_ **

_go ahead because i know i’m right  
_ _i’ve kept my phone on on every flight i have ever been on_

**_Are you serious_ **

_as a heart attack  
_ _oh also, check out my foolproof method of reminding myself that i checked a bag so i don't leave it at the baggage claim again:  
_ _[IMAGE DOWNLOAD: a photo of Richie’s palm, where he’s written “don’t forget your bag, dummy”]_

 **_Sorry did you  
_ ** **_Did you say? Again??_ **

_:)_

**_Okay I can’t tell if you’re just fucking with me_ **

_i mean generally its safe to assume im always fuckign with you but why would i make myself look like even more of a disaster than i already am_

**_Are you on flight 2283?_ **

_...yes you little psycho  
_ _are you gonna shoot my plane down?_

 **_This is the second time this conversation you’ve brought up crashing the plane  
_ ** **_The government’s going to put you on some kind of watchlist_ **

_i didn’t say *i* was crashing the plane_

**_No, asshole, I’m setting up a flight alert so I can remind you to get your suitcase when you land_ **

_aw!! honey!!!_

**_> :(  
_ ** **_Flight alert cancelled_ **

_NO I’M SORRY_

**_It’s too late  
_ ** **_Hey I can’t call you, right_ **

_okay eddie have you. have you ever been on a plane before_

**_…_**

_no eds, i cant talk on the phone unless i want everyone on this flight to hate me more than they already do_

**_...You’ve already taken off your shoes, haven’t you_ **

_obviously i've taken off my shoes_

**_You are… just the worst_ **

_you sure know how to make a guy blush ;)_

**_Do you ever stop_ **

_no_

**_Ok I’ve gotta move the last of my stuff into Bev’s place  
_ ** **_I'll talk to you later_ **

_but im lonely : (_

**_You’ll survive_ **

There’s a text from Mike, too, a cheery **_Hope you’re having a good flight!_** Richie looks at it, thinking about what he’d tried to say to him all week, and types out _“i’m gay,”_ just to see what it looks like. It’s easier like this, when he doesn’t have to say it out loud. 

And then, when he tries to close out of his texts, he hits “send” instead. 

He’s not panicking. He’s really not. Everything feels like it slows down for a second, and there’s a lurch in his chest, but he’s not panicking. He watches the gray dots appear, then disappear, then appear again. 

Micycle

**_That good, huh?_ **

Richie laughs, just a little bit. 

_i didn’t mean to send you that_

**_Do you want to talk about it?_ **

_not really haha_

**_Ok, then, we won’t talk about it. :)_ ** **_  
_** **_Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me! It doesn’t change anything at all._ **

And maybe Richie’s crying on the plane, just a little bit. His hands are shaking. There’s a pocket of air filling his chest until he feels like he can’t breathe, but then it bursts, and - and it’s okay. It’s okay. 

**_Does anyone else know?_ **

_nope_ _  
__thats, uh, the first time i've said it_ _  
__well not said it, you know_

 **_It counts!_ ** **_  
_** **_You know the rest of the losers wouldn’t care, right?_ ** **_  
_** **_We all love you, so much._ **

_please stop or i am going to ugly cry on this plane_

**_Okay, okay. Love you, Richie. :)_ **

_love you too, mikey_ _  
__no homo_

**_Oh my God._ **

* * *

When the plane lands in California, the seatbelt sign hasn’t even dinged before Richie’s phone is buzzing again. 

Spaghetti 

**_DON’T. FORGET. YOUR BAGS._ **

Richie’s heart swells. Music plays in his head, piano chords and guitars and synth and crooning singers, one of those 80s power ballads about being so head over heels in love that you can’t think straight. _Ha. Think straight._ The messages keep coming in. 

**Richie I know your plane has landed because the app is telling me that your plane has landed  
** **Are you going to the baggage claim?  
** **Oh my God, is your phone even on right now or did you dick around all flight and drain the battery**

And then his phone is ringing, and he suddenly feels like he’s going to die if he doesn’t hear all of this in Eddie’s actual voice, the way he pulls his “o”s out, that tinge of New York flatness that comes out on certain words, the way it gets all pinched and reedy when he starts ranting. 

“Mystic Pizza, Julia Roberts speaking,” Richie says, walking through the terminal. 

“Richie!” Eddie shrieks, and it’s the sweetest sound Richie’s ever heard. “Please tell me you’re still at the airport.” 

“No, I left already, just me, myself, and my carry on,” he says. “Why, is there something I’m forgetting?” 

Eddie sucks in a breath on the other end of the line. 

“Eddie?” 

“I know you’re joking, but I am staying on the line with you until you physically take your bags off the carousel.” 

“Aw,” he says, glad that Eddie isn’t there to see the wide, dopey smile on his face. And then, because he hates himself: “You always did take good care of me, Eddie Spaghetti.” 

He forgets to put on a voice, and it comes out earnest, instead. Fuck him sideways. Richie doesn’t _want_ to talk about his feelings. But he wants to talk to Eddie, pretty much all the time, and when he does, he can’t seem to fucking stop himself. 

Eddie’s quiet. “Are you being serious?” he finally says, voice small. 

“I -” Richie knows he should take the out, but he doesn’t. “Yeah, man, of course I am.”

“Really?” 

“What do you mean, really? Every time I got the shit kicked out of me or fell off my bike doing something stupid, you were the one who dug around in that sexy little fanny pack to stitch me back up.” 

“Oh my God, you pervert, I was like, fourteen.” 

“So was I!” 

“Sexy little -” 

“You had _so_ much neosporin, dude.” 

“It was nothing, please don’t make it a thing.” 

“You also let me crawl in through your window when I was upset, and that one time I - when we were sixteen, you let me ugly cry all over your shirt, and you didn’t even say anything. It was objectively disgusting, but you just let me.” 

“You never told me what you were so upset about,” Eddie says. 

That had been the day he’d found out that there was graffiti about him in the girls’ bathroom. _richie tozier sucks flamer cock_. “I don’t even remember,” he lies. 

“Rich, I didn’t even -” Eddie makes a noise in the back of his throat. “This is so stupid. _You_ were always the one taking care of _me_. Not like my mom tried to. For real.” 

And that just about bowls Richie over. _For real_ , he thinks. It echoes in the chamber of his heart. _For real._

“What?” he laughs, incredulous. “What are you talking about?” 

“You - you cheered me up with your dumbass voices. You let me ride on your handlebars and talked me down from a hundred asthma attacks,” Eddie says. 

“You don’t have asthma,” Richie says automatically, which is good, because the thing he’s thinking, plane-rumpled in the baggage claim of LAX, is, _I would have done anything for you. I would have died for you, but I never got the chance. I loved you. Somehow, I think I still do._

“Yeah, I know,” Eddie says. And Richie suddenly can’t have this conversation anymore, not surrounded by thousands of strangers who could overhear the way he’s talking, the tenderness in his voice, even if they don’t know who he’s talking to. 

The silence stretches like molten glass. “Richie -” Eddie starts, but the carousel alarm blares, cutting him off. 

“Was that the conveyor belt thing?” Eddie asks. 

“No, I just make that noise with my mouth sometimes,” Richie says, and just like that, they’re back on familiar footing. 

“Ha, ha,” Eddie says. 

“I’ve got the goods,” Richie says, as soon as it’s true, and he expects Eddie to hang up now that his mission has been accomplished, but he doesn’t. He lingers. 

“How far is it to your place?” he asks. “I’m imagining like, a college dorm with really ugly posters taped to the wall and a twin sized bed. It’s hard to picture you in a house.” 

“You’ll have to come visit, then,” Richie says. “Seeing is believing.” 

“Yeah, sounds good,” Eddie says, casually, but Richie can hear the smile in his voice, and it makes him grin, too. 

They don’t hang up. They keep talking when Richie gets into his Uber, even though the driver shoots him a look. He just raises his eyebrows and says “you know, the wife,” conspiratorially, because he’s fucking _possessed_ , and Eddie curses him out on the other end of the line. They’re still talking when Richie opens his front door, and clears all the rotting food out of his fridge. Richie describes the color of the mold on his bread in a David Attenbrough style monologue and listens to Eddie gag. 

“I hate that your voices are actually better,” Eddie grouses. 

“Mike said the same thing,” Richie says. “On the one hand, I’m honored, but on the other, I don’t think I’d be employed if I was still doing the same shitty voices I was doing when I was thirteen.” 

“You’d make an excellent waiter,” Eddie says, thoughtfully. 

Richie laughs. “I was, dude! ‘97 to ‘02!”

“I can see you working at one of those diners where you like, sing to customers, or shit talk them, or like, rollerskate around.” 

“Eds, three for three.” 

“Really?” 

“No, I got fired from like, four different places. I got great tips most of the time but I never used the script I was supposed to. One time this woman sent back a well done steak and said it was undercooked and I said ‘what the hell do you want me to do with this, set it on fire?’”

“Seems reasonable to me.” 

“Does it? Because I feel like twenty-five-year-old you would have been asking twenty-five-year-old me if you could speak to my manager.” 

“That’s so fucking mean!” 

“Am I wrong?” 

“Listen, food should come out the way you order it! Food allergies are fucking serious, people can die from them!” 

“You don’t have any food allergies, dude.” 

“You don’t fucking know that!” 

“Neither do you!” 

There’s a pause. “Holy shit,” Eddie says, finally. “I guess I don’t, huh. I don’t, uh. I don’t really know anything.” 

“Okay, hold on -”

“I can’t stop thinking about how different I’d be if I remembered.” 

“Fuck,” Richie says. Because he’s been thinking the same thing - of course he has. If he’d remembered that he was a part of something, a group of people who loved him, would he have come out? Would he have been braver? Would he have been a better person? 

“I look at myself now and I just…” Eddie trails off. “I wasn’t fragile, I was - I was brave. And I wasn’t _mean_.” 

“Yes, you were,” Richie laughs.

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says. “You know what I mean.” 

And Richie thinks about Eddie, who ran out on his mom to save them all that summer, who attacked a monster with nothing but his cast. Eddie, who bandaged them up, his mouth spitting out harsh words to cover the gentleness of his hands. Eddie, so full up with fierce affection that he’d rather die than let anything happen to any of them. 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “But you’re still like that.” 

“How would you know?” Eddie asks. And it’s a fair question, because it’s one that Richie’s been asking himself for the past two weeks. How can he love Eddie like this when it’s been twenty years since he’s seen him? He doesn’t know how he takes his coffee, or the way he acts at work, or the things he wants out of his life, or the way his hand would fit in his. 

But maybe that just means he’s got time to learn.

“Because I know you,” Richie says. “And you’re still brave, and a little mean.” 

“Okay -” 

“You still care.” 

“Yeah. I do.” 

Richie hefts the trash bag, walks it out to the garbage. Eddie is silent. 

“You still with me, Eduardo?” 

“I wasted so much time, Richie,” he finally says. “I wasted my whole fucking life.” 

“No, you didn’t,” Richie says, heading back inside. “You wouldn’t say that about me.” 

“Richie, you wasted your whole fucking life.” 

“Yeah, maybe we both did. So what. Who cares?” 

“Who _cares?_ ” 

“Yeah, Eddie. Who cares. As long as we don’t waste the rest of it, right? You’re so -” 

“I’m so what.” 

“Eddie, you’re doing it. You’re changing your whole life.” 

“I am forty years old and I’m going to be living with _roommates_.” 

“Bev and Ben don’t count as roommates.” 

“Yeah, I know,” he says. “I just wanted to complain. I’m - I’m really glad they’re gonna be here in the city.” 

“Yeah, I’m excited to have Billy Boy here,” Richie says. “He says his wife is gonna hate me, I can’t wait to find out.” 

“If she’s normal she’s going to hate all of us.” 

“No! That’s quitter’s talk!” 

“I am a quitter now, Richie.” 

“Fuck yeah you are!” 

“Thanks.” 

“No, it sounds like you should have done this a long time ago, Eds,” Richie says. “Again, I don’t know shit, but. You, uh. You deserve to be with someone you care about.” _Someone who takes care of you, for real_. 

“I don’t feel like I’m allowed to,” Eddie says, softly. And that’s too real. It feels like someone is slicing into Richie’s skin to peel it off like a mango. And he knows he should say something encouraging, but he can’t summon the words. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I get it.” And then, because he wants to keep talking to Eddie, but he doesn’t want to keep talking about _this_ , he changes the subject. “So what kind of takeout am I ordering here?” 

Richie puts him on speaker while he’s eating, tries out a new bit that has Eddie _howling_ with laughter and giving it right back to him. They’re as giddy with it as they’ve always been, winding each other up in a way that no one else ever understood. No one else ever had to. _I was right,_ he thinks, listening to Eddie snort _. I still know him, even after everything. I still love him._

When Eddie yawns around his words, Richie suddenly remembers that time zones exist. “Fuck, dude,” he says, checking the time. “It’s almost midnight there.” 

“Shit, is it really?” Eddie asks. Richie hears rustling. 

“You should go to bed,” Richie says.

“I’m _in_ bed,” Eddie corrects, and Richie swallows, focusing on reading every single line of text on the movie poster hanging on the wall across from him. _Don’t picture him in bed. Don’t picture him with rumpled hair in old-man pajamas or a t-shirt and shorts. Don’t imagine him stretching, and yawning, and his shirt riding up to reveal that strip of stomach, and looking over at you with those big, brown, sleepy eyes, and -_

“Richie?” 

“Hmm?” 

“Sounds like _you_ should go to bed,” Eddie says. “You’re still on east coast time.” 

“Alright, old man, maybe we should both go to bed,” Richie says, feeling like a teenager on the phone with her boyfriend, flat on her back, curling the cord around her finger. _You hang up first. No, you hang up first._

“Yeah,” Eddie says. Richie can hear him moving around, trying to get comfortable. 

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Richie blurts. 

“What, why?” Eddie asks. 

“I’ve just heard that when people break up they can’t sleep,” Richie continues, pathetically, “because they’re so used to having someone else in the same bed.” 

“Oh,” Eddie says. He pauses, and Richie thinks that maybe he can feel him, three thousand miles away, if he closes his eyes and focuses on the sound waves humming between them both. “No, I - no.” 

“Sorry for asking, that was weird.” 

“You’re always weird,” Eddie says. Richie’s getting ready to say goodnight when he speaks again. “I’ve been sleeping alone my whole life,” he says. “I’m used to it.” 

“Oh,” Richie says. He doesn’t know what to do with that. 

“Goodnight, Richie,” Eddie says. 

“Night, Eds,” Richie says. He hangs up. “Motherfucker,” he says to his empty house. _Eddie, Eddie, Eddie_ , his heart thrums. He feels it like a pulled muscle. He aches. 

* * *

“I’m calling bullshit, Rich. There’s absolutely no way you can cook.” 

“Darling,” Richie says. “Honey. Sweetie pie.” 

“I will pay you actual money to stop calling me pet names.” 

“Using the carrot instead of the stick for once, I like it. Although, you know -” 

“If you make any kind of sex joke about either of those things I am going to hang up.” 

“I don’t know, Eds, your mom always loved it when -” 

He hears the end call tone and bursts out laughing, calling Eddie back immediately. He picks up after half a ring. 

“I hate you.” 

“No, you don’t.” 

It’s become a thing, the two of them talking like this. Eddie had called first, and that had made it okay for Richie to call, and now Richie is in his underwear making stir fry on his stove at 3pm, and Eddie is prepping salmon to bake in the oven, and it’s almost like they’re cooking together. Richie tries not to imagine them in the same kitchen, knocking into each other’s space, bickering over how many sesame seeds are too many sesame seeds, spraying each other with the faucet hose on the kitchen sink. 

“How are you not like, a ramen and takeout guy?” Eddie asks. “You had to have been in college, right?” 

“Obviously,” Richie says. He opens his fridge, tosses in the green beans he impulse bought after Eddie had made fun of him for not eating enough vegetables. “But then I was totally fucking broke, so I had to learn what I could do to make a twenty pound bag of rice fun.” 

“Innovative,” Eddie says, and Richie smiles under the praise. 

“The answer to everything is spices,” he says. “That and dumping in whatever you have in your fridge until it tastes good.” Eddie’s quiet. “What, is that stressing you out?” 

“No,” he grumbles. “I just - I don’t know how to do that.” 

“Eddie!” Richie grins. “You’re jealous of me!!”

“I didn’t _say_ that -”

“You’re jealous of my savant-like cooking abilities! You measure out everything exactly, don’t you? Follow the recipe like your apartment’s gonna blow if you get one step wrong?” 

“...Cooking is a science,” Eddie says, begrudgingly. 

“It’s an _art_ , baby,” Richie says. It’s okay if he says _baby_ like this, brash and loud. It’s normal. 

“I actually think I’m better at baking?” Eddie says. “You can’t improvise when you’re baking. But Myra never let me do it.” 

“Afraid you were gonna burn your little handsies on the oven rack?” 

“No, dumbass, I think it was like - gender role bullshit.” 

“Gender roles _are_ bullshit.”

“Bold words coming from the guy with a standup routine that -”

Richie sighs. “Yeah, yeah, I get it, I’m not funny.” 

“You -” Eddie pauses. “You’re gonna get such a big head. You _are_ funny, Richie. When you’re being yourself, you’re funny.” 

_But it’s terrifying to be myself,_ he thinks. _I can’t bear to get up on that stage and let anyone see who I actually am_. 

“Thanks,” he says. 

“What, that’s it?” Eddie sounds surprised. “No crowning yourself the mayor of humor or whatever shit you usually do?”

“It’s -” Richie tries to think of the right thing to say, before he decides that he’s not going to say anything about it at all. “Mike said I should try voice acting. I told my manager, and he’s poking around a little bit, but he says that people are gonna need an explanation from me first, about… well. You know. Killing my own career.” 

“You didn’t kill your career,” Eddie says. Richie can hear the eye roll. 

“I forgot my own name on stage.” 

“Yeah, but people come back from like, drug-induced benders all the time.” 

“I was having a fucking! Clown-induced bender!” 

“That’s true, but everyone _thinks_ it’s drugs.” 

“Thanks, Eddie, I feel so much better!” 

“Sounds like you’ll just have to pitch a show that you actually wrote so you can explain yourself.” 

“We’re working on a press release,” Richie grouses. 

“Hm,” says Eddie. 

“Do you think that voice acting is a bad idea?” he asks. He hates how needy he sounds. He remembers trying to get Eddie’s attention, throwing everything he had against the wall in the hopes that something would stick, quantity over quality. And it had always been worth it for that one joke that unravelled Eddie, broke him down to gasping laughter. Eddie’s opinion is still the one that matters most. 

“No, I don’t think -” Eddie pauses.

“Me neither.” 

“Let me talk! I don’t think it’s a bad idea, Rich, I think it’s actually a really fuckin’ good one. It makes a lot of sense for you, and I can see you having a lot of fun fucking around in one of those little recording booths. It’d be weird hearing your voice come out of like, a cartoon rabbit, but it makes sense. Teen Richie would love that shit.” 

“But…?” 

Eddie sighs. “But I think Adult Richie is capable of making something like, funny, and smart, and shit.” 

He’s not going to cry. He is _not_ going to cry. 

“Richie, are you... crying?” 

“No!” Richie sniffles. “I just, uh. I haven’t written any of my own shit for like, ten years.” 

“What is it you were saying to me earlier? Something about being brave and making life changes?” 

“Hm, that doesn’t _sound_ like me.” 

“Richard.” 

“Edward.” 

“I’m just saying you should think about it,” Eddie says. “That’s all.” 

“Thanks, Eddie,” Richie says, soft and still a little bit watery. He thinks he’s cried more in the past few weeks than he has since he was a teenager. Being lonely is a constant, low-level ache, but it’s manageable. If you keep your heart to yourself, nobody can break it but you. After this long, opening up to other people - being really, blindingly honest - is a discomfort. Maybe Richie’s already broken his own heart, and this is what putting it together feels like - sharp, flayed open, inspected. 

“How’s the salmon looking?” he asks. 

“I don’t know, like salmon?” Eddie pauses. “It’s in the oven.” 

“Sounds boring as shit.” 

“I _am_ boring as shit, Richie.” 

“Sorry, are you insane? Do you actually think that about yourself?”

“You literally pretended to fall asleep when I tried to tell you what my job was.” 

“Your job is boring! Your salmon is boring! You, Eddie Kaspbrak, are infinitely interesting.” 

“If you say so.” 

“I say so. _Boring_ my ass. You’re like a feral cat, dude. Anyway. Come visit, I’ll cook you something spicy.” 

“No thanks, I don’t want diarrhea.”

“Are you saying I’m going to poison you or just being like, totally Eurocentric here?” 

“I have IBS, asshole.” 

“Ooh, Eddie. Tell me more about your intestines.” 

“That - that one’s for real,” Eddie says. “I promise. I’ve got a new set of doctors so I can, uh - figure out what’s actually wrong with my body. I feel like I’ve gotta start over so that I can trust what they’re saying to me.” 

Richie hums. “Is it helping?” 

“Yeah, I think so,” Eddie says. “I’m going to Presbyterian so the doctors all have the same records. They can like, interface. It’s nice. And, uh…” 

“Uh what?” 

“I saw the new GP first, right, and she was like, _oh, so what brings you here today, Mr. Kaspbrak?_ Which is a normal fucking question, but instead of being like, oh, I just need a new doctor, I just fucking - told her everything?”

“Oh, everything?” 

“Not everything, asshole. Obviously I didn’t tell her about the, fucking, demon clown that terrorized our childhoods. I just told her about - about my mom, and Myra, and having forgotten that part of growing up, and always thinking that - that I was sick, in like, every possible way, and all that shit.” 

“What did she say?”

Eddie laughs. It’s embarrassed. “She was so nice. She did the whole appointment like normal and then at the end was like, _you know, I can give you a referral to a psychologist, in network, if that’s something you’d be interested in?_ ” 

“You’re in therapy now?” 

“Yeah, I - I am.” Eddie pauses. “Was that a weird thing to tell you?” 

“Dude, no, are you kidding me?” Richie says. “This is like, stripe two on your black belt. Get divorced! Get therapy!” 

Eddie laughs. “Don’t forget ‘learn to bake’.” 

“Three stripes!” Richie yells. “I’m gonna make you merit badges.” 

“I think you’re mixing extracurriculars, here.” 

“Yeah, I’m confusing myself. Are you taking up karate, too? Are you a black belt yet? I’m picturing you in a class with a bunch of tiny kids, just like, kicking the shit out of them.” 

“You’re so dumb,” Eddie says, but it sounds so fond that Richie’s chest squeezes. He loves this, the comforting hum of Eddie’s voice on the other end of the line, slightly tinny, the intimacy of hearing it right in his ear. “How’s your mid-afternoon stir fry? I can’t believe you’re eating this late. This no longer counts as lunch, Richie.” 

“It’s fucking fantastic,” Richie says. “Wanna try some?” 

“Yeah,” Eddie laughs, just a little bit. “Smear it on your phone, let’s see if that works.” 

“Okay, here you go.” 

“Tastes like shit.” 

Richie laughs, loud and honking.

“Oh my God, dude, that was right in my ear,” Eddie says, but he’s snickering too. 

“I know, I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m sorry, I sound like a horrible goose-donkey hybrid.” 

“Shut up, you do not,” Eddie says. “I like hearing you laugh.” 

Richie feels dizzy. “Oh,” he squeaks out. _I like hearing your voice_ , he thinks. _I like you more than I’ve ever liked anyone. I -_

“I’ve actually gotta go,” Richie blurts. 

“Oh, really?” Eddie says. Richie hopes he’s not imagining that little hollow dip of disappointment in his voice. 

“Yeah, my manager’s calling,” he lies. “I totally forgot that I was supposed to talk to him today.” 

“Gotcha,” Eddie says. “Maybe you should tell him you’re working on new material.” 

“I’m not working on new material.”

“Maybe you should start working on new material.” 

“Maybe you should stick that salmon up your ass.” 

“Why, are you into that?” And it’s _funny_ , and Richie loves that Eddie’s pushing back, like he always is, but the old panic is starting to crawl its way back up his throat, slick as bile. He remembers being seventeen, Eddie leaning in close, frowning, to pull a leaf out of Richie’s hair, smoothing it down and nodding, once, and Richie’s face going lobster-red as if his thoughts were going to jump right into Eddie’s head if he got close enough. He can’t know. He can’t _know._ He’s going to leave you, he’s going to _hate_ you, he’s - 

“Hang up, dipshit, you’re gonna miss your call.” 

“Bye, Eds.” 

“See ya.” 

* * *

Richie’s out of excuses. The more they talk, now, the more the last twenty years pull themselves taut, tie themselves off like stitching a wound shut. Eddie used to take his coffee black, but he’s switching to tea, because his acid reflux has been acting up, which is definitely tied to his anxiety, his therapist thinks. He likes work for the routine, the structure that a nine to five gives his day, but he misses working with his hands, the way fixing their bikes always grounded him. When he tells a story he pitches up and down, ever so slightly, into little voices, and Richie doesn’t think he knows he’s doing it. He gives Richie shit about getting scurvy, but he doesn’t eat fruit. He’s swapping out baking for running in the Park, and he complains about the tourists, and the other runners by the Reservoir, but he loves the soreness in his muscles after. He says it reminds him that his body can be useful. 

Richie’s in love with him. He’s more in love with him than he’s ever been. He can feel it growing in his throat like a tumor. Every time he hangs up, he wants to call him right back and keep talking, but he also doesn’t know how he’s supposed to handle hearing his voice anymore. He’s happy. He’s miserable. Talking to Eddie almost hurts, loving him from a distance like this. 

Eddie's driving when he calls next, which Richie always savors; hearing Eddie go into an apoplectic fit over Manhattan drivers, rolling down his window to scream at the pedestrians and cabbies alike, fills Richie with a pure, concentrated joy. It's almost like being there with him. 

"You can't fucking merge like that, you fucking asshole psychopath! People will die!" He screams. Then, a little quieter: "Tell me what you did today until I calm down, dude."

Richie smiles. "Sorry, when exactly do you calm down, Eds?" 

"You drive me to this!" Eddie shouts. "My coworkers think I'm calm! My w - my ex-wife thought I was calm!"

"Has she met you?"

Eddie pauses. "No," he says softly. "Not really."

"Should I dig into that, or…" 

"Not yet," Eddie says. "I just saw her."

"Ah." Richie shifts. "I'm actually driving too, do you wanna road rage at the guy in the SUV who just sped up so I couldn't pass him?" 

"Fuck yeah, put me on speaker."

"Already done."

"Hey dickhead!" Eddie screams, right into the phone. "Do you think you own the entire goddamn highway? It's called sharing the road, asshole!"

"Hm, not your best work."

"Eat glass!” 

Richie remembers the way Eddie laughed when Bowers beat the shit out of him when they were kids, the feral scream he let out during the rock war. Eddie's always been equal parts rage and affection, white-hot and warm. "Okay, now we're talking."

“Get out of the fast lane if you’re not going to nut up, asshole!” Eddie shouts. “What kind of control issues do you have? Get off the fucking road and back to driver’s ed if you can’t -” There are honking noises in the background, and Eddie lays on his own horn. “Okay, motherfucker, where do you think you’re going? I’m going ten over in the fast lane, so hold your fucking horses. What’s the emergency, you’re not important enough to need to be anywhere -”

And Richie is wheezing with laughter, now, because Eddie doesn’t have a single ounce of self awareness, and he loves him for it, and his heart is growing three sizes in his chest like he’s the fucking gay Grinch. 

“Oh my God,” he laughs. “I fucking love -” 

Oh no. 

Oh _no_. 

But Eddie’s still ranting, and he doesn’t seem like he’s heard what Richie almost accidentally said to him, bursting out of his chest like a fucking xenomorph. _I fucking love you,_ he thinks, so loudly he’s shocked Eddie can’t hear it through the line. _I fucking_ love _you_. 

He just waits for Eddie to take a breath. He tries again. 

“Do you feel better, Eddie Spaghetti?” 

Eddie pauses. “Actually, yeah. Fuck, dude, you were supposed to be talking.” 

“I’m not interesting.” 

“I hate you.” 

“No you don’t.” 

“No, I don’t,” Eddie says, and it’s fond, and Richie’s whole brain is turning to static. 

“I actually saw Went and Maggie this weekend,” Richie says. 

“Went and Maggie!” Eddie says. “Oh my God, I haven’t thought about them in so long. Fuck. They were always so nice to me.” 

“Yeah, that’s because they fucking loved you,” Richie says. _Love you, love you_. “You made me look so bad, dude. They thought you were a perfect little angel.” 

“No they didn’t, they heard me cursing you out in the backyard when we were like, nine.” 

“After I tried to convince you that _The Thing_ was a documentary and started walking all weird like I was infected, right?” 

“Oh my God, yes,” Eddie says. “Fuck you, that wasn’t funny!” 

“It was hilarious!” 

“How are Went and Maggie, anyway?” 

“They’re good. They refuse to come visit me in LA. They wanted to do old people stuff in Santa Barbara, so I also did old people stuff in Santa Barbara.” He pauses. “It was really nice, actually. I told them all about you guys. Said we ‘reconnected’ or whatever.” 

“Aw.” 

“Yeah, they were telling me about some of the old pictures they still had back home. Apparently, they still have the old photo strip? From -” 

“Oh my God, yeah,” Eddie breathes. “I forgot about that. I can’t believe all seven of us piled into that thing. We were so stupid.” 

“Were?” Richie asks, lightly. He’s remembering the way Eddie clutched at him, then, the way he pulled him into the booth, first, leaving them alone for a split second, Eddie beaming at him, flushed, Richie dazed, grateful for the way the others knocked into his knees right after, stopping him from doing something catastrophically stupid. 

“Speak for yourself, shit-for-brains,” Eddie says. 

“I can’t,” Richie says. _I fucking love you_. “I’m terminally stupid.” 

“You were a fucking _nerd_ , Rich!” He loves when Eddie calls him _Rich_. _That’s your fucking name, dumbass_ , the only rational part left in his brain says. But it’s not, not quite. It’s the closest Eddie ever comes to giving him a nickname - just for him, something that says _I know you, I can call you what other people don’t_. “You would have been valedictorian if you hadn’t skipped History so much senior year to smoke out back with Bev.”

Richie seems to remember coaxing someone else out with them, too, once or twice, blowing smoke into Eddie’s face until he screamed, and they’d all had to make a break for it when one of the teachers found them there, together. Eddie had told the others that Richie had given him cancer. Richie hadn’t stopped laughing for the rest of the day. 

“Yeah, yeah,” Richie says. “I know, I wasted my potential. Could have been an astrophysicist. Could have been a risk analyst.” 

“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Eddie says. 

“Make me,” Richie says. 

“I can hang up the phone right now,” Eddie says. “That isn’t an empty threat.” 

And Richie has another hour left in his drive, but his heart is still thrumming with nervousness at the thing he almost said to Eddie, and he doesn’t know if he’s strong enough to listen to Eddie voice again, right now. 

“Actually I’m almost home, I should probably go,” Richie says. 

“Yeah, okay,” says Eddie. 

“Oh, shit,” Richie says, remembering what Eddie had said. “Did you wanna talk about divorce stuff? I can, uh. Circle the block for a few minutes. Or hours. Whatever, it’s cool.” 

Eddie huffs a laugh. “I don’t wanna hold you up.” 

“No, it’s okay.” 

“I don’t really have anything to say,” Eddie says. There’s a pause. “Which feels like a weird thing to say about someone you were married to for like. Seven years. You’re supposed to be two halves of a whole, or whatever.” 

“Cornball.” 

“Shut up! Stan says way cornier shit every _second_ he talks about Patty! I’m fucking living with _Ben and Bev_ right now!” 

“Oh, God,” Richie says. “Yeah, they’re back now, aren’t they.” 

“They sure are,” Eddie says. 

“Wow. That would be -”

“Agonizing? Yes, thank you, I know. I’m looking at apartments so I can get out of their hair. Not to be mean, I just -”

“No, I get it. It’s -” Richie chews the inside of his cheek. How much can he say without showing his hand? “I get it.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Lonely sad sacks club,” Richie laughs. 

“Do you think Mike wants to join?” Eddie asks. 

“No, Mike’s happy,” Richie says. There’s a pause. “What?” 

“Are you not?” Eddie asks, quietly. 

And Richie has absolutely no idea how to answer that. He’s not - it’s not like he’s miserable, not in the way he’s been miserable before. He tends to drift his way through his days now, half-dressed and listless, in a way that leaves a residue of self-hatred. His sleep schedule is still fucked, and he’s started writing shit down in a Google doc, sometimes, but he doesn’t feel like he’s _doing_ anything. But - at least he’s not just fucking around by himself, anymore. He has a net, now. 

Aside from Eddie, he talks to Mike most, which has been a surprise to both of them, Richie thinks, since they’d never been all that close as kids. He’s taking the bus through the Midwest now, talking to more strangers, taking notes about the stories he’s heard. He talks to Stan, once a week, and Richie knows they understand each other on a level he wishes they didn’t - too many pills, sometimes. Walking right up to the edge of an accident. He’s been over to Bill and Audra’s, too, and she doesn’t think he’s funny, so he tries to tone down the jokes when he’s there, turn himself into an approximation of an adult. 

“Rich?” Eddie asks again. He feels like he’s going to drown. 

“I’m fine, Eds,” he says. 

“Not quite what I asked,” Eddie says. “I - I’ve been trying to spend time in my own head, lately, which I kind of hate. My therapist says that’s normal, but that it’s also where I live, so I should try to like, clean it up? Which is cheesy, but it kind of makes sense. She’s been telling me to ask myself what I want. So I’m, uh. Trying. To do that.” 

“That’s good, Eddie,” Richie says. 

“No, I -” he cuts off, sounding frustrated, but Richie can’t fathom why. “I mean... What do _you_ want, Richie?” 

_You_ , Richie thinks immediately, loud, loud, loud. _I want_ you. He could say it, he realizes. The word is right at the back of his mouth, the bunch of his tongue, by his uvula. 

_I’ve gotta get out of this,_ he thinks. _My dog’s dead. I just got into a car accident. Sorry, gotta go._

“I don’t know,” he lies. 

“That’s okay,” says Eddie, and he’s being so sweet, which isn’t even close to okay. Richie’s phone beeps, and it’s a text message, but that finally clicks his brain into coming up with a believable excuse. 

“Ah, shit,” Richie says. “My phone’s about to die.” 

“You don’t have a charger?” Eddie asks. “I thought you were almost home.” 

Fuck him for paying attention. “I remembered I was out of toilet paper.” 

“Uh -” 

“And my poop has been like. Really weird all week, so -” 

“Jesus, Richie, that’s disgusting! Oh my God! I’m hanging up now.” 

“Wait!” Richie calls. “Let me describe the color so you can tell me if it’s normal! Ask your IBS doctor for me!” 

Eddie hangs up. Richie swallows. _Fuck_. 

* * *

Richie checks his phone at the gas station and realizes he has a missed call from Stan, so he calls him back, holding the phone in the crook of his neck as he clicks the nozzle into place in his tank. 

“Richie Rich!” a female voice answers. Richie brightens. 

“You sound different, Stan,” he says, and it’s a lazy dad joke, but Patty laughs anyway, clear like a bell. “You stealing your man’s phone now, Pats? Turning to a life of crime?” 

“Eh, he doesn’t mind,” she says. “He’s in the shower, I can tell him you called back?” 

“No worries,” Richie says. “How’s he doing?” 

Richie can hear movement on the other end of the line, a screen door sliding open, maybe. “I think he’s good,” Patty says. “I - I think he knows we’re finally on the other side of it? I hope so, anyway. He talks about therapy with me a lot.” 

“Good,” Richie says. “That’s really good. I’m glad he’s got you, Patty.” 

“I’m glad he’s got you, too, Richie,” Patty says. 

“Stop that, you’re gonna make me cry.” 

“Oh, yeah, I forget you’re a blubberer like me.” 

“I am not!” 

“You lying to me, Richie?” 

“I am, yeah.” 

“How’s everyone else doing? Bev and Ben are back from their trip, aren’t they?” 

“Yeah, I was just talking to Eddie about it,” Richie says. 

“You talk to Eddie a lot?” Patty asks, casually.

“Ha,” Richie breathes. The gas pump clicks, and he fumbles with his wallet. “Uh. Yeah. All the time, actually. Probably too much.” 

“Too much?” Patty asks. 

“I, uh.” Richie swallows. It’s like he can feel his heartbeat in his whole body. It takes him three swipes to pay for the gas. 

“Sorry-” Patty starts. 

“No, it’s. One second.” Richie gets back into his car, and it feels safer, here, closed up like this, no one in earshot. Patty’s one of them by this point, he thinks, but she’s still on the outside. She didn’t grow up with him. She’s not _living_ with Eddie. Ben would understand, but it’s too close. All seven of them are too close. 

But Patty - Richie thinks that Mike was right, when he’d called them _two peas in a pod_. They’re not the same, but he thinks maybe she'd understand. Patty wants to laugh, and Richie wants to tell jokes. Patty wants to listen, and maybe - maybe, for once, Richie wants to talk. 

"You still with me, Tozier?" Patty asks. "Wanna tell me about it?" 

And he wants to laugh, but something clicks into place instead and it comes out choked. "Yeah I'm - I'm talking to him a lot, and I thought it'd get easier, but it - it didn't, because if I haven't gotten used to it by now I don't think I ever will. I think it's killing me, Patty."

"Oh, Richie," Patty says, and he hates how sympathetic she sounds, hates that she knows exactly what he means, feels grateful that he didn't have to say it. "You love him."

His pulse is in his ears. The words have jumped right out of his mouth and into Patty’s. 

"Yeah," Richie forces out. "I do. I fucking. I feel like it's gonna crawl right out of me. I almost said it on the phone today." 

"Oh boy.” 

“Tell me about it.” 

“Start at the beginning for me," Patty hums. “Catch me up.” 

"Oh like - being fucking. Growing up in Derry and knowing you're… that you’re -" 

"You don't have to say it out loud." 

"Yeah, but how - but how fucking stupid is that? There are people who just fucking talk about this shit, and we almost died back there and I still can't say, _hey, I don't like women like that!! I'm exactly what you thought I was the whole time!_ I'm forty fucking years old and I still can't say I'm gay!" 

The word rings in the still air of the car.

"I think you just did, Richie," Patty says. He can hear the smile in her voice. 

"Fuck," Richie says. 

"How does it feel?" 

Richie doesn't know how it feels. A little bit like he's lying, somehow, because maybe when you've been lying your entire life, the truth is the thing that feels wrong. He feels his chest thrumming with anxiety, and the air feels a little too stale, but mostly - mostly, he feels the same as he always has. 

"It feels… like I expected it to be a bigger deal." 

Patty laughs. "Did you want it to be a bigger deal?" She asks. "I can play some music here. Sing you a song." 

"No, I just…" Richie trails off. "We all lost a lot of time. Except Stan, I guess. He found you." 

Patty hums. "No, you're right. Stan lost things, too. We both did."

"Sorry," Richie says. 

"Nothing to be sorry for," Patty says. "You didn't give my husband PTSD." 

"Au contraire," Richie says. "You clearly haven't heard about the Purple Vomit Incident of '92."

“The _what_?” Patty shrieks. "Alright, we can get back to your feelings later. Vomit Incident, now." 

Richie’s shocked to find himself pulling up to his house, still talking to Patty, because that means it’s been an hour. It’s like he heard her warm, encouraging voice and entered a spill-your-guts fugue state. 

“Okay, how have we been talking this long?” Richie says. “I feel like I should apologize.” 

“I’ll kill you if you do,” says Patty. 

“Where’s Stan?” 

“He’s banging around the kitchen, making eyes at me.” 

“ _Oh?_ ” 

Patty laughs. “Not those kind of eyes. More like, _when are we going to grab P.F. Chang’s,_ eyes.” 

“Does he want to talk to me?” Richie asks. 

The screen door slides and clicks again. “Baby, wanna say hi to Richie before we go?” A pause. “He says no.” 

Richie laughs. “He’s lying! Put him on!” 

“Stop talking my wife’s ear off, Richie, I’m starving,” comes Stan’s voice. 

“We’re bonding!” Richie says. 

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” says Stan. 

“You love it.” 

“No comment.” 

And then the line goes dead without so much as a “goodbye.”

Staniel the Maniel

_DID YOU HANG UP ON ME???????_

**_It’s date night, Richie._ **

_oh, so ur wife is more important to you than i am??_

**_Yes._ ** **_  
_** **_SORRY RICHIE WE LOVE YOU!!! -PATTY_ **

_wait i thought you had date night on thursday_ _  
__...do you call every night date night_

**_:)_ **

_lame_

**_:(_ **

_have fun you crazy kids, xoxo_

* * *

“Alright, I officially need to move.” 

“You keep saying that.” 

“Yeah, I do, but that was before I walked in on my roommates having sex in the kitchen.” 

“Aw,” Richie says. “Good for them.” 

“Not so good for me, Richie!” Eddie yells. “I eat there!”

“So does…” Richie’s laughing so hard he can hardly get it out. “S-so does-” 

“Richie, if you finish that sentence I will fly to Los Angeles and strangle you with my bare hands.” 

“You promise?” 

“Richie!” 

“You eat there? So does Ben!” 

"I cannot stand you. You have absolutely _no_ sympathy for my pain." 

"Absolutely none!" 

“Okay,” Eddie says. “How did you know he was eating her out, though?” 

Richie howls with laughter. There are tears in his eyes. “I wouldn’t have known if you hadn’t just told me, Eds!” 

“No. Oh my God.” 

“Of course he was eating her out, Eddie, look at him.” 

"No! I am wandering the city trying to scrub that image from my mind! Aaaand there's someone pissing on the street, that’ll do it. It is four in the afternoon!!" 

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know, the Park? I'm fleeing the scene."

"You could go back to work?" 

"Are you fucking kidding, no way."

"I thought you liked your job."

"I like it enough," Eddie says. 

"A rousing review."

"Like, I like it in the same way I like accidentally memorizing viral infection statistics, or carrying antimicrobial wipes with me everywhere I go." 

"Oh, so it makes you horny." 

"I am fucking BEGGING you to talk like a normal adult." 

"No can do, Eddie, baby. Got that arrested development from the childhood trauma that wiped my brain clean." 

"Made your living off it, I guess.” 

“I’m an entrepreneur.” 

“That’s not what that means.” 

“What would you have wanted to do?” Richie asks. 

“If I’d remembered?” 

“Yeah.” 

“I have… absolutely no idea,” Eddie huffs. “And thinking about all this fucking _time_ just makes me want to crawl out of my own skin. You know?” 

“I kind of do.” 

“I mean, sort of. You have what you wanted, right? Career-wise?” 

“I mean, it’s fake,” Richie says. “I think I would have wanted to do it differently. More honest. I think if I’d remembered I would have been honest. I would have - I wouldn’t have wasted so much time trying to cover myself up. Or maybe I would have. I don’t know.”

Eddie hums, and Richie can hear him frowning, hear him about to ask a question. “This is too depressing, dude, I can’t keep talking about this,” Richie says. 

“Alright,” Eddie says affably. “Jesus, fuckin’ - can you please control your dog!” he says. 

“What dog?” 

“You know I’m not talking to you, dumbass. What are you doing right now?” 

“Talking to you.” 

“Not really an answer.” 

“I’m writing. I’m avoiding writing. Don’t worry about it. You know what _you_ should do?” 

“What?” 

“You should go to the Natural History Museum,” Richie says. “Ben and Bev are on the Upper West Side, right?” 

“I am walking past the museum, yes.” 

“ _Past_ the museum??” Richie asks. “But Eddie! That’s where they keep the dinosaurs!” 

“I know, Richie.” 

“That’s where the big Easter Island head comes to life at night! Because hot King Tut keeps his magic tablet there!” 

“Okay -” 

“That’s where Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal do funny voices by that pyramid thing!” 

“No, it’s _not_ , Richie, that’s the Met, that’s on the other side of the park.” 

“You should go to the Met!” Richie grins. “Wait, you’ve seen _When Harry Met Sally_?” 

“Of course I’ve seen _When Harry Met Sally_ ,” Eddie grouses. It’s a little embarrassed. “It’s got great dialogue.” 

“You know what’s on the West Side? The _You’ve Got Mail_ cafe. Have you been to the _You’ve Got Mail_ cafe?”

“No, Richie,” Eddie sighs. 

“Where’s your sense of romance?” 

“Killed by my loveless sham of a marriage,” Eddie says. 

“I bet Ben takes Bev to the _You’ve Got Mail_ cafe.” 

“Oh my God, it’s called Cafe Lalo.” Richie grins. Of course he knows. Of course he’s been there. “You’re such a fucking tourist, dude.” 

“I’m not a New Yorker like you! Living it up in the city that never sleeps!” 

“I sleep plenty. And what is with this like, rosy romcom view of the city? This place is a fucking cesspool. People are on top of you literally all the time, and it’s never quiet, and you pay one billion dollars for three square feet of apartment, and in the winter the buildings form these like, nightmare wind tunnels, and right now everything fucking reeks because it’s September and the whole city is just like, baking alive.” 

“Spoken like a true New Yorker, Eds.”

“Maybe I’m sick of being a New Yorker,” he says. And - huh. It’s always been easy to picture Eddie there, doing his neurotic job in his cramped office, fast-walking past skyscrapers, muttering curses under his breath as he jostles tourists downtown. It’s an extension of this keyed-up part of himself, nervous energy stoked without an outlet. And Richie loves this part of Eddie, the worrier, the _have you ever heard of a staph infection??_ , the _I guess I’m the only one who brought any fucking sunscreen, are you guys_ trying _to get skin cancer?_ But he loves the other parts of Eddie, too - reluctant laughter, feet in his lap until he had the full beam of Richie’s attention, quick hands smoothing over Ben’s cuts and scrapes. Maybe New York isn’t where Eddie belongs, after all; maybe it’s been trying to sand down the parts of him that don’t fit there. 

“Yeah?” Richie asks. “You thinking about retiring to the countryside? Writing an essay about why you left New York, like every thirty year old marketing manager?” 

“Maybe I am! Maybe I want some fucking space!” 

_I’ve got a whole house, baby_ , Richie thinks. _Put your feet in my lap again. Crowd your way into the hammock._ _You can take up my space anytime you like._

“Where are you thinking?” he says instead. 

“That’s a good question,” Eddie says. He pauses. “I don’t know, is LA less gross than New York?” 

Richie can feel tenderness blooming under his ribs. He’s grinning so wide he knows that Eddie will be able to hear it in his voice when he talks. _Move here, move here, move here_. “Well, we don’t have garbage on the streets so, yeah, definitely.” 

“Oh, now you hate New York?” 

“If it gets you to come to LA I do.” 

“What happened to your romcom version of the city?” 

“Fuck romcom New York.” Richie kicks his feet onto the table. “It’s perfect here. No problems whatsoever. Beautiful sunshiney Los Angeles. Nothing bad ever happens in California. They made that a rule, wrote it into the state constitution.” 

“Manson murders,” Eddie says. 

Richie bursts out laughing. “That’s the first thing you think of?” 

“Night Stalker,” Eddie continues. “Golden State Killer.” 

“Why are these all serial killers?” Richie asks. “Is getting serial killed high on your list of things to worry about?” 

“Our fucking, unhinged child bully was literally a serial killer!” Eddie says. “He literally tried to serial kill me!” 

“So, statistically then…” Richie says. “Hear me out. That’s probably a one and done situation, right?”

Eddie barks out a laugh. 

“Like, lightning doesn’t strike twice. How many people have been attempted murdered like, multiple times?” 

“It’s weird that that’s reassuring,” Eddie says. 

“But it _is_ reassuring, isn’t it!” 

“Yeah,” he says. “Now all that’s left to worry about are the forest fires.” 

“I have a hose in my backyard.” 

“Earthquakes.” 

“My house has a very strong foundation.” 

“The entire state falling into the ocean?” 

“Well if we go, you’re going, too. Global warming’s gonna get New York first.” 

“Hm… skin cancer?” 

“I’ll check your moles for you any day, baby.” 

And Richie wants to slap himself in the face for that one, because he just keeps going right up to that line and kicking sand over it, but then Eddie’s laughing - a real, guffawing belly laugh - and hearing it sends warmth curling through Richie’s gut. He can almost picture the way Eddie’s smile pulls a little more to the right, just like when they were kids, the way his eyes crinkle into little crescent moons. And fuck, he wants to see it in person. He wants to know if he’s remembering it right. 

“Alright, I guess I’m out of excuses, then,” Eddie says. 

“I miss you,” Richie blurts out. His face burns. 

“I miss you, too,” Eddie says softly. “Maybe -” 

There’s a knock at Richie’s door. “Who the fuck is that?” Richie mutters. “One second, I gotta go check.” 

“Okay,” Eddie says. 

Richie pads over to see Bill on his front porch, college-kid backpack slung over one shoulder, keys in his hand. 

“Big Bill!” Richie grins. Bill pulls him in for a hug. “It’s good to see you, but what the fuck are you doing at my house?” 

Bill frowns. “Eddie s-said you were writing,” he says. “And that y-you needed a writing partner t-t-to keep you on track.” 

“Eddie!” Richie shouts into the phone. “I like procrastinating! I’m very good at it! Why would you do this to me!” 

“It’s for your own good!” Eddie laughs. “Put me on speaker!” 

“Hey, Eddie,” Bill says, and he’s laughing too, now. “You sneaky... bastard.” 

“Eddie, Eddie, go back home,” Richie says. He’s as grateful to not be left alone with Eddie as he is annoyed to be interrupted. “Go get Ben and Bev, let’s make this thing a party.” 

“It has not been nearly long enough for me to go back there, Richie.” 

“What -” Bill starts. 

“Eddie caught Benverly getting it on in the kitchen.” 

“Oh my God,” Bill says. 

“Benverly?” Eddie says. “What, they have a celebrity couple name now?” 

“Yes,” Richie says. “They’re beautiful enough. They’ve earned it.” 

“Sorry, h-how long has it been?” Bill asks. 

Richie looks at his phone. “Like half an hour. You’re right, Eds, that is nowhere near long enough.” 

In the end, Bill and Richie don’t get any writing done at all. The three of them talk until Eddie goes back home, and then he puts them on speaker so they can talk to Ben and Bev, too. 

“Congratulations on the kitchen sex, you two,” Richie says, immediately. 

“Beep beep, Richie!” Ben laughs. 

“We didn’t think Eddie would be home early!” Bev wails. “How were we supposed to know his therapist changed his time!” 

“Hey, I started therapy, t-too,” Bill says. 

“Solo or couples?” Richie asks, before realizing that’s probably not an appropriate question.

“Yes,” Bill says. 

“We should start a club,” says Eddie. “Stan can join - oh, shit. You know what we should do?” 

“Okay, yes, let me get my laptop.” 

They Skype in Mike, Stan, and Patty, and the first thing out of Stan’s mouth, when he looks up from his phone, is, “yes, we should all be in therapy. Of course we should, how is that even a question?” 

“Richie doesn’t think he needs to go,” Eddie says, looking pointedly into the camera. 

“Judas!” Richie gasps. “Why are you peer pressuring me, Bev’s not in therapy.” 

“Of _course_ I’m in therapy, Trashmouth,” she says. “What are you _talking_ about?” 

“Okay, Ben’s not in therapy.” 

“Technically I’m not,” he says, “but I go to my AA group like, twice a week.” 

“Okay, Mike’s not in therapy,” Richie tries. 

“No, but I should really start remote sessions,” Mike says, thoughtfully. 

“Okay, _Patty’s_ -” 

Patty bursts out laughing. “It’s over, Richie,” she says. “I’m sorry.” 

“I will consider it,” Richie says. He thinks about opening up that squirming mass of rot inside of him and thinks it’s probably a lie. But he looks at Patty through the screen, then Mike. He’d started prying himself open with them, just enough to wedge something in. Maybe he’s not lying. Maybe, at some point, it’s going to turn into the truth. 

They’re rowdy together like this, and they talk late. Richie watches Eddie the whole time. It’s perfect; he can see his face in the corner of the window, pixelated and shadowed, and no one can tell he’s looking at the way Eddie ducks his head when he smiles, the way that his dimples stretch all the way over his cheeks. He’s taken off his tie but he’s still wearing a button up, and he rolls his sleeves up to expose the taut, wiry lines of his forearms, leaning back in his chair. Richie watches his throat move when he tips back his head to swig his drink, and Richie burns. He’s beautiful. He knows he doesn’t have to look away, that no one can tell he’s watching in the first place, but Patty _knows_ , and _he_ knows, so he does, anyway. 

There’s a moment, though, when Stan and Ben and Mike are talking about narrative nonfiction, when Richie’s eyes slide back over to Eddie, and he can swear that everything goes quiet, and that Eddie is watching him, too. 

* * *

Patty Cake 

_Patty he told me he bought funny socks because they reminded him of me_ _  
__Patty i’m going to die_

**_You’re not going to die_ **

_Yes i AM_

**_Maybe - now, hear me out_ **

_DON’T_

**_Maybe you should tell him how you feel!_ **

_Great advice. Absolutely not_

**_Yeah, what do I know about love?_ **

_ >:( _

**_This is great parenting practice for me, Richie_ **

_PATTY!!!! ARE YOU CALLING ME A CHILD!!!_

**_:-)_ **

* * *

“I’m quitting my job.” 

“Mazel tov.” 

Eddie sighs. “I’m not quitting my job. Today was just like, fucking, having someone shove my head down a garbage disposal.” 

“Are you just now leaving work? it’s like 9 there.” 

“Yeah, I fucking know. I thought this shit was done after our quarterly stuff wrapped last week, but someone fucked up the reports and we had to go through them one by one to figure out where the mistake was.” 

“I still have no idea what you do, but that does sound shitty.” 

“It _was_ shitty, thank you.” 

“You should do something fun tonight.” 

“Something fun, what the fuck are you talking about? It’s 9pm, I’m going to go home, eat some bad takeout, and go to sleep.” 

“I don’t mean going clubbing, asshole.” 

“Well then what do you mean?” 

“Well,” Richie says, careful, not careful enough. “If you were in LA, I’d invite myself over to your apartment, and bring you the bad takeout, and we could have like, a movie night.” 

Eddie huffs a quiet laugh. “What, would you climb through my window?” 

“Nah, dude, we’re forty, I’d use the front fuckin’ door,” he says, gratified to hear Eddie’s snort of laughter on the other end of the line. “You’d be on the top floor anyway. Penthouse shit. I’d fall and break my skull open trying to get in.” 

“No you wouldn’t,” Eddie says. “Your head’s like titanium. Thickest skull around.”

“You’re the worst,” Richie whines. “Be nice to me when I’m bleeding out on the ground outside your beautiful Los Angeles apartment. Cradle me.” 

“I can’t,” Eddie says. “You’re too heavy.” 

“Guess I’m not allowed to die, then,” Richie says. 

“Nope. Not ever.” Eddie pauses. “You’re still allowed to crawl in my window, though. You’re the only one who ever was.” 

Richie swallows. He changes the subject.

They talk all the way through Eddie’s takeout order (pad kee mao, drunken noodles, _I promise you will like it, Eds, I will venmo you if you don’t_ ), and Richie’s ( _I'm getting nachos. No, it’s not disgusting, I’ll just put you on speakerphone_ ), and then Eddie is scrolling through Netflix, complaining about autoplay. 

“You know,” he says. “We could still have a movie night.” 

“Eddie, I don’t know how to break it to you, but I’m gonna need a little more forewarning to make it three thousand miles.” 

“No, dumbass, like, we find the same movie and both hit play on our laptops at the same time.” 

“Why are you on your laptop?” Richie asks, because he’s feeling so unspeakably bruise-tender at the thought of him and Eddie, three thousand miles apart from each other, pressing play on the same movie at the same time. _Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal,_ he thinks, nonsensically. _Casablanca._

“Because I’m in the guest room,” Eddie says slowly, like he’s explaining it to a child. “Not all of us have like, giant fuckin’ houses that we bought with Comedy Central money.” 

“My house is regular-sized,” Richie says. “Cozy, even.” 

“Mmhmm,” Eddie says, unconvinced. The pause between them drags. “I mean. We don’t have to watch something, it was just -”

“No!” Richie shouts, way too quickly to be considered casual. “No, I want to. Gonna synchronize our screens like Cold War spies.” 

“Yeah, that comparison makes a ton of sense.” 

“Oh my God, the clicking noises are driving me insane. Stop scrolling and pick a movie.” 

They watch _Point Break_ , in the end, and Richie is comfortable, and warm, lying on his couch with his head propped up on his arm, and Eddie’s still on speaker, and Richie’s glad they’ve put on subtitles because they talk through most of the movie. Richie’s watching a young, beautiful, shirtless Keanu Reeves say _why can’t I ever say what I really mean?_ , dark hair, dark eyes, angular nose, and he thinks, _I am so fucking predictable._

“Was this movie always this gay?” Richie asks. 

“Richie.” 

“I’m serious, Eds, this is a romance. Classic enemies to lovers. Swayze and Keanu are yearning their asses off. This is the gayest shit I have ever seen.” 

“I don’t think you’re allowed to call a movie gay if you’re straight, Richie.” 

“Um.” Richie feels like a door’s opened right in front of him, except the door is actually the side of a plane, and he has to decide, in the next ten seconds, if he’s going to jump out of it, or if he’s going to double down, rebuckle his seatbelt, and wait for the plane to land again. His head is pounding. He can feel his heart skittering in his chest in a way that’s making him nauseous. 

He jumps.

“I’m allowed to,” he says, so softly that he wonders if Eddie’s even heard him over the movie. He’s going to be sick.

“What?” Eddie’s barreling on, and Richie knows that it hasn’t clicked. “That’s not how it works, you don’t get to just, like -”

“Yes I _do_ , Eddie,” he says, more insistently now. He pushes his glasses to the top of his head and scrubs his hands over his eyes so hard he sees a shower of sparks in the dark. “I’m - I’m not -”

“You’re -” Eddie huffs. “Oh. _Oh_. Shit.” 

“Yeah,” he says miserably. “Oh, shit.” 

“No, I just, uh -” 

“We don’t have to talk about it, Eddie -” 

“No, no, I want to! Fuck, I’m fucking this up, you just fucking came out to me and I’m not doing this right at all.” 

Richie’s ears are ringing. 

“Can I start over?” Eddie is saying. 

“Yeah,” Richie says, staring up at his living room ceiling, trying to ground himself. This is fucking unreal. _You just fucking came out to me_ , Eddie said. He had. He had. He feels hot all over. 

“Thank you,” Eddie says. 

“What?” Richie laughs. 

“Oh my God, don’t _interrupt_ me!” Eddie says. 

“I’m not interrupting you!” 

“Yes you are, I’m trying to be heartfelt!” 

“Then be heartfelt already!” 

“I’m glad you told me!” Eddie says. “I’m glad you told me, and I know that must have been really hard, because we grew up in hell and got bullied for this shit like, twenty four fuckin’ seven.” _Richie Tozier sucks flamer cock,_ he thinks. “So I hope that you know that there’s - there’s nothing wrong with the way you are. There’s nothing wrong with the things that you want. I just…” Eddie finally stops to take a breath. “I just want you to be happy. You’re kind of my best friend in the fucking world, so.” 

Richie’s crying, and he knows it’s not quiet, but Eddie doesn’t say anything about it, and Richie’s grateful for that. 

“Are you okay, Richie?” 

“I’m okay,” Richie snuffles. _Point Break_ is still playing in the background, which seems absolutely ridiculous in light of the direction the whole conversation has taken. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m - I’m really good, actually.” 

“Yeah, you are,” Eddie says softly. “You’re really brave, dude.” 

Richie scoffs. “Yeah, nothing says _not a coward_ like a middle-aged gay guy still pretending to be straight!” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Eddie says, and it’s way sharper than Richie expected. 

“Jesus.” 

“Sorry, I -” Eddie’s quiet. “This is so hard. Telling the truth is just - it’s really fucking hard.” 

“I guess so,” Richie says. “It’s getting easier, though.” 

“Mm,” Eddie says. “Hey, should we - should I turn off _Point Break_ , or…?” 

“No, don’t you dare,” Richie says. “Hot Keanu is helping.” Richie knows it’s not the first time he’s talked about men like that, but in context, it feels completely different. This time, Eddie knows he’s not joking. “Was that weird?” 

“What, ‘hot Keanu’?” 

“Yeah.” 

“No,” Eddie says. He pauses. “He is hot.” 

And Richie starts laughing, finally, and he lets the tension drain right out of him. He tries to, anyway. 

“When did you know?” Eddie asks him when the credits roll, voice slow with deferred sleep. 

“Oh,” Richie says, shifting on the couch. _It was you_ , he thinks. _It was you, the whole time_. “When I was like, thirteen?” 

“That early?” 

“Yep.”

“So - that summer…”

“Yeah,” Richie says. He swallows. “I was never really scared of clowns. I was scared of… of this fucking, wrong thing inside of me. I was like, oh, so puberty’s bad for everyone, but it turned me into a monster. Cool.”

“Richie,” Eddie says. He sounds heartbroken, and Richie can’t hear the sympathy in his voice without feeling like he’s going to cry again. 

“I was so scared that you guys would find out, or - or sense it, somehow, and hate me for it,” Richie says. 

“We would never have hated you, Richie. We could never. No matter how many times we beeped you.” 

“Thanks, Eds.” 

“I mean it. We all love you. _I_ …” 

“What?” 

Eddie sighs. “I just. You carried this for such a long time, Richie.” 

“Yeah, it’s a bummer,” Richie says. “Nothing screams fun like alternating crippling loneliness with self-loathing, anonymous sex.” 

“If it helps,” Eddie says, after a second, “turns out you can have occasional sex with someone you do know and still feel cripplingly lonely.” 

“Eddie, baby, that does _not_ help!” Richie says. “Oh my God, that’s so sad!”

“How is it sadder than what you just told me!” Eddie bursts out. 

“It’s not!” Richie laughs. “Sad sacks club!” 

“No,” Eddie says, grumpy. “Stop that.” 

“Okay,” Richie says. “But only if you say the magic word.” 

“Fuck off.” 

Richie smiles. He loves him. He loved him at the start, and he loves him just as much, again. Maybe more, now. “Yeah, that’s actually the one,” he says, fondly. 

“We’re gonna be okay,” Eddie says. “I just decided.” 

“Oh, yeah?” 

Eddie makes a sleepy sort of hum that Richie feels in his stomach, and he feels suddenly, profoundly lucky to have heard it, to be on the other end of the line as Eddie falls asleep. 

“It’s like two in the morning, there,” Richie says. 

“I’m not tired,” Eddie mumbles. It’s the last thing he says before his breathing evens out, and Richie listens to it, the quiet wheeze of an almost-snore, and follows right behind him. 

* * *

Richie comes back into bleary consciousness at the most impressive string of curses he’s ever heard. He’s on his couch, for some reason, and his back fucking hurts, and it’s pitch black out. He reaches over for his phone, confused, but when he presses the side button to check the time, there’s an active phone call, ten hours and forty-seven minutes. 

They fell asleep on the phone. _Oh my God_.

“Eddie?” he mutters. He hears scrabbling sounds, the microphone jostling fabric. 

“Hey, Rich, go back to sleep,” Eddie’s voice comes, a blanket the dark. 

“What time is it?” 

“Like, five am for you, and eight for me, which means that I am going to be late to work for like, the first time in a fuckin’ decade, and last time it was when my car broke down. Fuck, I still have to shower, I reek.” 

“Okay,” Richie says.

“Are you still on your couch, Richie?” Eddie asks. 

“What?” 

“Your couch, did you fall asleep on your couch?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. 

“Get up and go to your bed,” Eddie says. “It’ll be better for your back.” 

Richie feels his eyes well up with tears. Eddie Spaghetti, always looking out for him. Even from thousands of miles away. Even when he’s late for work. “Eddie,” he says, and it comes out choked, and so full up with love that Richie thinks Eddie must be able to hear it. 

“Yeah, Rich?” 

Richie sighs. “I love it when you call me Rich.” 

“Your name?” Eddie says, confused. “Go back to sleep, dummy, I’ll talk to you later.” 

“Have a good day at work, honey,” Richie mumbles. 

“Shut up,” Eddie says, huffing a laugh. 

“I wish…” Richie says. 

“You wish what, Rich?” 

“I just… I just wish…” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, softer than Richie thinks he’s ever heard his voice. “Me too. Goodnight.” 

“G’night.” 

* * *

“But Eddie,” Richie says. “What if there’s an emergency.” 

“In what universe would having the number to my work phone help in an emergency?”

“What if the cell towers go down?” 

“Then we’re all gonna have bigger problems. Fuck off, dude.” 

“Corporate Eddie sucks.” 

“Yeah, he does. And he’s not giving you his office phone. It’s _unprofessional_.” 

“You are _literally_ talking to me from your office right now, on your cell phone.” 

“I am _leaving_ work, Richie. Well. I am hiding in my office. I just have to wait until Brent is gone, or he’s gonna make me try his wife’s homemade kombucha.” 

“Fucking Brent.” 

“ _Fucking_ Brent,” Eddie grouses. “He has been talking about how he’s going to quit his job to take a sailing trip along the coast for like, ten years now.” 

“How’s his wife gonna brew kombucha on the boat?” 

Eddie lets loose a laugh that rings warm in Richie’s chest. “I don’t know, Richie, how do you brew kombucha on land?”

“Is that the setup for the world’s weirdest joke?” Richie asks. “You forget to cherish her. I don’t know.” 

“How are you a comedian, again?” 

“Bad taste, baby!” 

Everything’s felt a little different, since Richie came out to Eddie. Not bad. Just… different. Eddie hasn’t pulled away - the opposite, actually. They’ve been talking almost every day. Richie wants to tell him to come visit, to check out California, but he doesn’t know what he’d blurt out if he actually saw Eddie in person. 

“Maybe I should go on a trip,” says Eddie, like he can see right into Richie’s brain. 

“You should do whatever your little heart desires, Spaghetti.” 

“I think following your heart is probably for college kids with trust funds.” 

“Hey,” Richie says, feeling himself curl in, emotionally. “Nah, don’t say that.” 

“Sorry, Rich,” Eddie says. “I’m just being… I don’t know. Myself, I guess. A little miserable.” 

“Maybe - now, hear me out,” Richie says. “Maybe we’re allowed to be happy? Maybe that’s a whole thing.” 

“Huh,” Eddie says. 

“I know,” Richie says. “Crazy, right?” 

“You know, it’s funny,” Eddie says, in a tone that doesn’t sound funny at all. “I, uh. I used to tell myself things were okay because there was nothing that I really wanted. That I wasn’t the kind of person who really needed to like, ask for things, or go after things. Like. I wasn’t happy, but I wasn’t sad either, because I just didn’t feel things that way. And that’s just not true. I… I want shit!” 

“Yeah!” 

“I want shit _so much_ , and I was so scared of failing that I just fucking, like, shot myself in the foot. I was so worried about not getting what I wanted that I forgot how to want it!” 

Richie doesn’t quite know what he’s talking about, but Eddie is saying it so vehemently that he finds himself nodding along anyway. “You’re allowed to want shit!”

“Yeah, I am! I am! And so are you!” Eddie shoots back. 

Richie thinks of Eddie’s taffy-pull smile, big brown eyes and beautiful neck. “No, I’m not,” he says, instantly. 

“Richie,” says Eddie, “I love you, but you are so fucking dumb.” 

And Richie’s brain fucking short circuits, then and there. His mouth goes dry. He can’t force a reply up out of his throat.

“Eddie,” he finally says. “What -”

“Knock knock!” comes a voice, a little faraway through the phone. 

“Who says knock knock instead of just knocking?” Richie says. 

“Hi, Brent,” Eddie says, in a clipped, falsely-polite tone that Richie can _hear_ the annoyance inside of. 

“Fucking Brent!” Richie laughs, so loudly that he hopes Brent can hear him. 

“I just wanted to - oh, sorry, man, didn’t realize you were on the phone.” 

“Put me on speaker, Eds!” Richie says. 

“No,” Eddie hisses.

“Brent!” Richie screams into the phone. “Give me Eddie’s office phone number!” 

“Your wife?” Brent asks, because he apparently has no sense of social etiquette. 

“I’m divorced, Brent,” Eddie says, short. 

“Wait, you’re what?” Richie asks. “Seriously?” 

“It’s coming through next week,” Eddie says. 

“Do you need to talk to Brent, I can hang up.” 

“Don’t you dare.” 

“Girlfriend, then,” Brent bulldozes on. “I was talking to Rajit earlier. He says he’s seen you laughing more in the past few months than the whole time you’ve been working here. Freaked him out. I said I knew you had it in you, even if everyone else thinks you’re all business, all the time. Tell me about her.” 

“No offense, Brent, but that’s kind of my business,” Eddie says. 

And that’s. Oh. That’s just. Something, isn’t it? Richie feels himself go lightheaded, like he’s just stood up too quickly after lying down. 

“I’m hanging up,” Richie says, giddy, “so you can tell Brent all about your mystery girlfriend. Taste that kombucha for me.” 

“No, don’t -” 

“I’ll call you later, Eddie, baby,” he croons, and it’s supposed to be teasing, but it comes out all wrong. “I love you.” 

Fuck.

 _Fuck_. 

Richie’s brain is bluescreening. He’s sure he should probably be panicking right now, internally screaming, but it feels like he’s frozen in place. He feels like he’s been caught in the deadlights again, eyes rolled back in his skull. 

“Oh,” Eddie is saying, voice small. “I -” 

Richie hangs up the phone. 

* * *

“Okay, don’t panic,” Richie says, out loud, into the quiet of his house. He stands up. “Don’t freak out. This is normal. You were being normal.” 

It’s _normal_ for best friends to say they love each other, even if they’ve never done it before. He could have meant _I love you_ in a friendly way. A platonic way. He didn’t. But he could have. 

Except, Eddie knows he’s gay, now, and Eddie could probably hear the wave of love crashing through his voice, and he’s going to _know_ , and - 

Richie calls Patty, but it goes to voicemail, so he calls Stanley, instead. 

“Hey, Richie,” Stan’s voice comes, calm and settled. “What’s up?” 

“Is Patty there?” Richie asks. “Can I talk to her?” 

“Wow, thanks a lot,” Stan says. “You don’t want to talk to your oldest friend. That’s cool.” 

“No offense,” Richie says. “I just love her more than I love you.” 

“Please don’t say that about my wife,” Stan says. 

“No, not like that,” Richie says. “I’m gay.” 

“I know,” Stan says, simply. 

“Oh,” Richie says. 

“Hold on.” There are a few seconds of silence before Stan speaks again. “Okay, here’s Patty. I love you.” 

Richie’s going to start crying. Again. Because - because, oh, it’s that easy. It’s Stan. Of course it is. “Thanks, Stan,” he says, choked. “I love you, too. I was lying before.”

“I know,” Stan says, again. “Call me later, if you wanna talk more?” 

“Yeah, of course. Thanks, Stan.”

“Thanks for telling me.” 

There’s a pause, then Patty’s voice comes through. “Hey, Rich, you okay?” she asks. 

“Not really, Patty,” he says. His voice cracks. 

“What happened?” 

“I, uh, I accidentally told Eddie that I loved him.” 

“And?” 

“What do you _mean,_ and! _And??_ Patty! I am in crisis!” 

“This is good! I’ve been saying you should tell him!” 

“I didn’t really tell him, exactly. More like, accidentally ended the conversation by saying _I love you_ , and then freaked out, and then hung up.” 

“Hm,” Patty says. 

“Patty,” Richie says. “Are you laughing at me right now?”

“Only a little, Richie, dear,” she says.

Richie groans. “He - it’s different, Patty. He knows I’m gay, now.” 

Richie’s phone buzzes in his hand, the long pulse of another incoming phone call. 

“Fuck.” He says. “Fuck!” 

“What?” 

“It’s Eddie, he’s calling me back.” 

“Answer him!” 

“I can’t fucking talk to him right now!” 

Spaghetti 

**_Answer your phone, dipshit  
_ ** **_I escaped Brent, I wanna talk to you_ **

_sorry, i can’t  
_ _i’m talking to patty rn_

**_...Why?_ **

_we're friends?? wtf do you mean why_

**_Okay haha  
_ ** **_Later tonight, then?_ **

_yeah, i’ll try_

“You didn’t answer him,” Patty says, disappointed.

“No I did not, Patty.” 

“Richie?” 

“Mmhmm?” 

“I think it’s going to work out just fine.” 

“Easy for you to say, Miss I-Met-The-Neurotic-Love-Of- _My_ -Life-When-I-Was-Eighteen.” 

“Yeah, and you met yours at eight.” 

“Patty,” Richie says. He feels like he’s being eaten alive, slowly digested. “Please, just - please don’t joke about this. It hurts too much.” 

“I’m not trying to make jokes, Richie,” she says. “You’re the comedian. I’m being serious.” 

“He doesn’t -” Richie cuts off, trying not to cry. “I can’t let myself hope. It hurts so much worse than just telling myself that it’s impossible. Like, Eddie’s not even gay! Just because he’s getting divorced doesn’t mean that he’d want to be with a guy. Me. Whatever.” 

“Do you not think that love is possible for you, Richie?” Patty asks. 

“Okay, you sound like a therapist right now.” 

“Maybe you should -” 

“I know I should go to therapy! I’m working up to it!” 

“You didn’t answer my question.” 

_No one is going to love me in the way I want to be loved,_ Richie thinks. _No one will ever touch me in a way that makes me feel safe._

“I - I mean, if we’re looking at the evidence, I would say that, no, it doesn’t really seem like love is in the cards for me. I’m forty fuckin’ years old and I’ve never been in an actual relationship. It’s pathetic. And I kind of understand why.” 

“You’re breaking my heart here, Richie. Why can’t you see what all of us see?” 

“Which is what, exactly?” 

“We all love you. I know that’s not the same, but it’s not all that different, either. I think you’ve got a lot of love to give, so I wish you’d stop trying so hard to keep it to yourself.” 

Richie wants to run away. He has no idea why he thought that calling _Patty Blum Uris_ was a good idea, because she’s the most earnest person any of them know, aside from Ben, and he feels like she’s performing open heart surgery on him right now. 

“God, Patty,” he says, and he knows she can hear him crying, and he doesn’t know why he’s cried more in the past few months than he has as an adult, except, of course he knows. Of course he does. “What the fuck?” 

“We love you, Richie Rich,” she says. “Call Eddie back.” 

* * *

He doesn’t call Eddie back. He tries throwing himself into the new material, but he feels like he’s hit a rut, because half of it was tied up in Eddie to begin with. He comes out to his manager, who’s thrilled, actually, sees the whole thing as the perfect rebranding opportunity. Richie thinks that’s a little bit fucked up, but he doesn’t really want to make jokes about his sexuality right now, so he focuses on childhood jokes, bouncing shit off Bill in Bill’s living room. (“I think Audra’s warming up to me, dude.” “Stop making fart jokes a-a-and all b-bets are off.”) 

Every time Eddie calls, he lets it ring until it goes to voicemail. He feels miserable, and mean-spirited, but he absolutely cannot listen to Eddie’s voice right now. 

Spaghetti 

_sorry, eds, in the recording booth  
_ _i can text but i can’t talk_

It’s not entirely a lie; Steve had gotten him a voice acting role in an adult animated television series. “I’m laying the groundwork here, Richie,” he’d said. “Baby steps. We’re pivoting. It’s gonna be fuckin’ fantastic.” 

He isn’t actually recording today, but Eddie doesn't have to know that. 

**_Oh, okay_ ** **_  
_** **_That’s cool, I didn’t know you were starting already_ **

_yeah dude!!_

**_Is it everything you hoped it would be?_ **

_lol_ _  
__it’s honestly really fun, they’re letting me improv a lot_

 **_Oh God_ ** **_  
_** **_Did no one warn them, or?_ **

_nope!!!!_

**_Have you met anyone famous yet?_ **

_why do none of you believe that i am famous_

**_You’re a C-list comedian, dude, calm the fuck down_ **

_last time you called me D-list… i’m moving up in the world B)_

**_What the fuck is that_ **

_smiley with sunglasses_ _  
__...no i haven’t met anyone, turns out we all record our lines separately because of scheduling_

**_I knew you wouldn’t_ **

_yeah, yeah, shut up lol_ _  
__you know what smiley you are? this one >:) _ _  
__tiny. evil._

**_> :( _ **

_a perfect likeness_ _  
__how's divorce shit_

**_Divorce shit is almost finalized_ **

_that's exciting!!!!_

**_It is_ ** **_  
_** **_It’s weird though_ ** **_  
_** **_Like I know I'm doing better, but Myra is, too_ ** **_  
_** **_She like… apologized to me??_ **

_...seriously?_

**_Yeah_ ** **_  
_** **_Which fucking sucks because she beat me to it, I had shit to apologize for, too_ **

_like what?_

**_Just like_ ** **_  
_** **_God, I wish I could talk to you right now_ ** **_  
_** **_On the phone, I mean_ **

Richie feels so guilty that he almost hits the call button right then and there. _You need me, Eddie? I'll be there. I'll listen to you vent. I'll fly to New York. Fuck the series. They can cast someone else._ It's pathetic, the way he'd do anything for Eddie except the one, small thing that Eddie is actually asking him to do. 

_i'm really sorry_

**_Don't be, you're working, for once_ ** **_  
_** **_I just… I knew Myra and I were bad for each other, but it's insane to see the other side of it?_ **

_what do you mean?_

**_Like, I’m doing better_ ** **_  
_** **_At least I think I am, I’m figuring... a lot of stuff out_ **

_you absolutely are_

**_But she is too_ ** **_  
_** **_She’s going back to school to become a hospice nurse, end of life care, you know?_ ** **_  
_** **_She told me that she wants to use the positive parts of her tendencies instead of the negative ones_ **

_that’s... a lot, holy shit_

**_Yeah, we’ve kind of been holding each other back for years_ ** **_  
_** **_Or trying to make the other person into something that we thought we were supposed to want_ **

_supposed to want?_

**_Yeah_ **

_what DO you want?_

**_For you to answer your fucking phone_ **

_D:_

* * *

Spaghetti

**_Hey, can you talk?_ **

_not right now, sorry :/_

**_Okay_ ** **_  
_** **_Just need to talk to you about something_ **

* * *

Spaghetti 

**_Richie, we’re… okay, right?_ ** **_  
_** **_Like, you aren’t mad at me?_ **

_jesus, no, eds, of course not_ _  
__i’m sorry, we wrap next week, i’ll have more time then_

 **_Bill says you’ve been workshopping new material with him_ ** **_  
_** **_Can I hear it?_ **

_you want to? really??_

**_Yeah, dumbass, of course I do_ ** **_  
_** **_Always_ **

_:)_

* * *

Micycle 

_you still gonna come crash with me or bill before thanksgiving?_ _  
__we’ve got plenty of room_ _  
__and you and bill can nerd out over his next book_ _  
__you can tell him he has to make the werewolf gay_

 **_You tell him to make the werewolf gay!!_ ** **_  
_** **_Where are we on that count, by the way?_ **

_the gay werewolf count?_

**_Richie…_ **

_yeah, yeah_ _  
__you, stan, patty, and eddie_

**_Halfway there! I’m so proud of you! :)_ **

_aw, shucks_ _  
__should i just… bite the bullet and text the group chat?_

 **_Only you know the answer to that one, my friend_ ** **_  
_** **_And yes, I will see you in a few weeks! I’m in Ottawa right now doing some research into this really fascinating family history, so I might push my visit by a week or so, depending on how it goes_ **

_how do you even find these people, mike??_

**_I met Oliver in a diner in Kentucky!_ **

_of course you did_

**_I’ll call soon!_ **

_love ya, mikey_

**_Love you too :)_ **

* * *

losers club 

_happy pride month_

**_Staniel the Maniel:_ ** **_  
_** **_Pride Month is in June, Richie._ **

_no no it's october, it's pride month 2_ _  
__the gays love halloween_

 **_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_** **_What is he talking about_ **

**_Ben HANDSOME:_ ** **_  
_** **_I'm sure he'll get to the point eventually_ **

_anyway, speaking of gays_

**_Spaghetti:_ ** **_  
_****_Here we go_ **

_eddie i swear to god_

**_Spaghetti:_ ** **_  
_****_Go ahead, rich_ **

_anyway, speaking of gays, i am one_ _  
__...ta da_

 **_Micycle:_ ** **_  
_** **_< 3 <3 <3 <3 <3 _ **

**_Staniel the Maniel:_ ** **_  
_** **_Proud of you. Patty is cheering_ **

**_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_** **_...wait are you being serious_ **

**_Miss Martian:_ ** **_  
_** **_fuck yeah, richie!!!_ **

**_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_****_This is real, this isn't a bit???_ **

**_Ben HANDSOME:_ ** **_  
_****_We love you SO much, richie. I am so happy that you felt comfortable enough to open up to us about this part of yourself. I know that must have been really difficult for you, after a lifetime of believing that it was something you had to hide away. You (1/2)_ **

**_Ben HANDSOME:  
_** **_have our support literally no matter what. I mean, emotionally. We aren't always going to laugh at your worst jokes. ;) (2/2)_ **

_ben, you earnest motherfucker. i love you, dude_ _  
__i love all of you guys, you're gonna make me cry_ _  
__even bill, even though you're unbelievably straight_ _  
__no this isn't a bit but now i can make as many gay jokes as i want!!!!_

 **_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_****_I had literally no idea, richie. obviously i love you too!!!!_ **

_yeah bill you have whatever the opposite of gaydar is_

**_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_** **_> :(_ **

_to be fair i’ve projecting super hard with sexist jokes for thirty years, so_ _  
__apologies to women_

 **_Miss Martian:_ ** **_  
_** **_wow, richie, thanks so much_ **

_stan tell patty_

**_Staniel the Maniel:_ ** **_  
_** **_No_ **

_bill tell audra_

**_Big Bill:_ ** **_  
_** **_she says congrats, but being gay doesn't give you a free asshole pass_ **

_HAHAHAHAHAHA_

* * *

Bev calls the week after Richie’s series wraps, after he’s let yet another call from Eddie ring to voicemail. 

“Richie,” she says when he picks up. “What the _fuck_ are you doing.” 

“Excellent question for all arenas of my life, Martian,” Richie says. “Can you be more specific?” 

“I’m talking about Eddie, Richie,” Bev says. His throat goes dry. 

“Ah.” 

“What the fuck is going on with the two of you?” 

“Is he okay?” 

“Richie, the man has been moping around the brownstone for weeks, now. I asked him why you guys hadn’t been talking as much lately and he basically yelled _I don’t know!_ at me.” 

“Bev -” 

“He thinks he’s done something to make you pull away from him. I don’t want to get in the middle of your business -” 

“Yes you do.” 

“Yeah, okay, of course I do. But he deserves an explanation, Richie.” 

“It’s not him, it’s…“

“It’s not him, it’s you?” 

“Yes! Of course it’s me! I’m not trying to hurt his feelings, I just - I just can’t talk to him right now, Bev. You don’t get it.” 

“I sure don’t! I gotta go, I have a lunch meeting.” 

“Okay. Don’t tell Eddie I’m avoiding him.” 

“No promises if you don’t tell him why.” 

“Bev -”

“You’re best friends, Richie. Figure it out.” 

* * *

Richie’s in a meeting with Steve when Eddie calls, again, but this time, it doesn’t tick over to voicemail and go quiet. Eddie calls again, and again, and again. 

“Who the fuck is blowing up your phone right now, Richie?” Steve asks. 

“It’s - fuck. It’s complicated.” 

“ _It’s complicated._ I don’t care about whatever you’ve got going on with whatever twink -” 

“He’s really more of a twunk, I’d say.” 

“Jesus Christ, Richie. Focus up, we gotta run through tonight one more time.” 

Richie’s gonna be doing a surprise set at a local club to test run some of his new material. No coming out stuff, yet. Just run of the mill, newly recovered childhood memories. He’d joked to Steve that he could do a whole show’s worth of material about his repression. Steve had raised his eyebrows up to his hairline and said, “You know what, that’s good, Rich. I think you’re onto something.” 

Richie checks his messages as soon as he can, biting the inside of his cheek. 

Spaghetti 

**_MotherFUCKER_ _  
__You are definitely avoiding me, dude!!_ _  
__It has been WEEKS, what the fuck is the problem??_ _  
__Whatever. We’re close enough. I’m gonna be as annoying as possible_ _  
__Phone’s ringing again? Yeah, it’s me. Buzz buzz, asshole._ _  
__I’m not gonna stop until you pick up_**

The phone rings again. 

Richie picks up. 

“Hey, Eddie,” he says, a little hoarsely. 

“Richie fucking Tozier!” Eddie yells. “Why are you dodging my calls?” 

“I’m not dodging your calls, dude, I -” 

“You totally fucking are! Like, it’s not like you owe me anything, but don’t fuckin’ lie to me on top of it.” 

Hearing Eddie’s voice, even brimming with annoyance like this, is pushing Richie over the edge. _Maybe_ , he’d thought, _if I went enough time without talking to him, I’d forget, and it’d be okay_. But his chest fills up with love, the pure, uncut rush of it sending him reeling. He swallows.

“Eddie.” 

He’s still talking. He sounds as miserable as Richie feels. “And I know this is like, a fucking pathetic thing to say, but I got so used to talking to you that I… I just... I _miss_ you, Richie. You’re my favorite fucking person. I mean, not right now. But we talk about fucking, _everything,_ Rich. I don’t understand why you can’t -” 

“Eddie, I can’t,” Richie hears himself say. He can feels his chest slowly starting to fill with panic, a trickle into a bathtub. “Please don’t ask me about this. It fuckin’ _hurts_ , dude.” 

“Is this -” Eddie pauses. “Is this because you said you loved me?” 

“Eddie -” 

“Because I didn’t - I didn’t think you meant it like -” 

“I -” 

“I mean, it’s a normal thing to say, it’s -” 

“It’s not normal, Eddie! I said it because I meant it!” 

“Okay? Sorry, you’ve been avoiding me for weeks because you love me? I love you, too, dude.” 

“Fucking hell, this is - okay, this is why I can’t keep talking to you, because you say shit like that, and it fucking - it fucking _kills_ me. Hearing your voice just -”

“What?” 

“Jesus, Eds, you’re not fucking getting this, are you?” A rush of adrenaline hits him. He feels reckless and brutal. 

“No, Rich, I’m not _fucking getting this_ , I -” 

“I love you when you rant at me, and when you tell me long, rambling stories about people at work, and when your voice goes all soft late at night, and when I help you decide what you should cook for dinner, and I want to be with you all the time, and I never want to stop talking to you.” 

“Then why - then why did you?” 

“Because I’m fucking in love with you!” Richie shouts. “Like, ass over tits, real deal, _stupid_ in love with you! And I thought, hey, just because I was crazy about you when we were kids doesn’t mean I’m still crazy about you, but I was fucking _wrong_ , because I am more in love with you than I’ve ever been. I’m more in love with you than I’ve ever been with anyone in my entire fucking life.” 

The line is dead silent. 

“You what?” Eddie’s voice finally comes, small and unsure. 

“Oh, my God,” Richie says, adrenaline fading. “Oh, fuck. I’m gonna throw up.” 

“Richie, fuck, wait -” 

Richie hangs up. He takes several deep breaths to keep from blowing chunks in his car. And then he powers his phone down. 

* * *

Richie tries desperately to clear his mind so he doesn’t blow it onstage, _again_ , but he feels like he’s going to vibrate right out of his skin. He’s not thinking about the audience at all. He’s thinking about Eddie. 

He tries to veer from _unhinged panic_ into _detached nothingness_ as he walks onto the stage. It works, sort of.

“Hey guys,” Richie says, pulling the mic off the stand. There are a couple of surprised whoops, scattered cheers. “Yeah, thanks. Surprise, bitches. I bet you thought you’d seen the last of me.” 

He pauses. He knows the way into the tight ten, because his new material has Eddie all over it, past and present tense.

“So I was talking to my best friend, recently,” he says. “Neurotic little bastard. Energy of a feral kitten. Love of my fuckin’ life. We met on the playground when we were eight, when he saw me playing in the mud like some kind of cartoon pig and said _excuse me, dirt has germs in it_ like a weird ghost child who died of the Spanish Flu _._ So I said, _you know what else has germs in it?_ and licked him right in the ear. I’ve never heard anyone else scream that loud.“

 _Keep it moving,_ his brain screams. 

“So my friend’s worried about serial killers, because of course he is. He’s listing off California’s most wanted like the Golden State Killer hangs out in the parking lot of the Arby’s behind my house. So obviously I’m like. Eddie. My dude. I don’t think _serial killers_ are high up on our worry to-do list. And he just goes silent and says, _Richie, you fucking dumbass. Our middle school bully literally turned out to be a serial killer_.” 

The crowd lapses into a shocked silence, then laughs, uncertain. “You can laugh! You can absolutely laugh, it’s funny because it’s _literally true_. You know all that shit everyone says about small town America? Like, we’re the happiest town around! Home to the biggest ball of yarn! Try our famous apple pie! Well, I’m from a charming little town called Derry, Maine. You know our claim to fame? Can you guess? Derry, Maine,” Richie brings the mic right up to his mouth, lowering his voice into a Voice, “ _the child murder capital of America_.” 

“And I fucking forgot! Eddie had to remind me! Because there’s this very cool thing called repression, which means that when something truly fucked up happens, your brain is just like. Hm. Don’t know what to do with this. Let’s throw it in the no-thank-you box? Yeah, put it in the no-thank-you box, there’s enough space next to the time he laughed so hard in high school that he wet his pants and had to borrow underwear from his friend’s dad.” 

“Hey,” he says, conversationally. “Could you tell I was bullied a lot as a child? From the _everything about me?_ ” The audience laughs. "I mean, now I look like a scarecrow who was cursed with sentience, or like a werewolf who just turned back into a person and put on the first set of clothes he found in the garbage so that he doesn’t have to walk around with his dick out. So imagine _this,_ ” he gestures to himself, “in middle school. Huge features. Coke bottle glasses. Buck teeth with braces. And a chronic inability to shut the fuck up. I looked like a fucking ventriloquist dummy." 

"And back then, just like now, I had an enormously punchable face. Something just screamed, _hey, knock my teeth out! Bonus points for a combo!"_

"My teeth were actually, weirdly, the one thing that never got fucked up. And I have a theory about that. My dad's a dentist, right? So i feel like that kind of takes the fun out of it, you know?" He puts on a voice like a bored housewife trying to organize date night. " _Well, we_ could _knock Tozier's teeth out,"_ he sighs. " _But his dad would just put them all back in there. That's definitely what dentists do._ "

"So you know, I was really lucky that way. Although, if my dad had been an accountant, they wouldn't have been able to frame me for tax fraud the way they did. Highs and lows." 

* * *

He's on his way out the back alley so he can beat the crowd when the bouncer pulls him aside.

"Hey, some guy who says he's your friend is here, can I send him back? Bill. Short dude, brown hair." 

"Yeah, absolutely," Richie says. "Actually, tell him I'll meet him out here, we can take a car back to my place." 

Richie’s calling a Lyft when he hears the door click open again, and when he looks up, his greeting dies in his throat. 

“Hi, Richie,” Eddie says. 

“You’re not Bill,” says Richie, dumbly. 

Eddie’s standing there in the alley in front of him, white knuckling the handle of a carry-on suitcase, wearing jeans and a sweater. His jeans are cuffed, and Richie can see a flash of green at the ankles. _Funny socks_ , he thinks. _They reminded him of you._ He looks like a nerd. It’s cute. Richie wants to touch him so badly he’s itching with it. 

“Bill went home,” Eddie’s saying. “He said to tell you that you were really funny tonight. You _were_ funny, by the way. Give that bit about the accountant dad like, one more beat, and you’re golden.” 

“Eddie,” Richie says. “Eddie. What - what are you doing here, am I hallucinating right now?” 

“Richie, what the fuck do you think I’m doing here?” He lets go of his suitcase. Takes a step closer into Richie’s space. 

“You really…” Richie trails off. He balls his hands into fists, lets go again. He doesn’t know what to do with his hands, what is he supposed to do with his hands? “You really just got on a plane?” 

“No, I teleported,” Eddie says. “Yeah, Richie, you hung up, and turned your fucking phone off, and I threw a bunch of shit into this carry on and got a cab directly to JFK. I don’t even think I packed any pants, I don’t know what the hell is in this thing. I’ve been - I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks, but you just - you just -” 

Richie should be making a joke about not needing pants, but he’s really nowhere near confident enough in what’s going on here to do that. “You came here to see me,” he says, instead. Richie feels like he’s just woken up, groggy and out of place, trying to put the dots together. Trying to let himself hope. Eddie wouldn’t come all the way to Los Angeles just to say he hated him. Eddie would never hate him. “You hate flying.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “I do.” And he’s looking at him like - like - 

“Oh, my God, Richie!” Eddie finally bursts out. “I love you back, you freak! You just didn’t give me a chance to say it!” 

“You what?” Richie says. There’s a lump growing in his throat. “Eddie, do you - do you really -”

“Yeah, I really,” Eddie says. Richie’s frozen in place, and Eddie steps forward, carefully, the toes of their shoes touching. He wraps his fingers around Richie’s wrist. Richie’s heart is going to thud right out of his chest. “I’ve been - fucking, trying to tell you for weeks, Rich. I mean, I think I’ve been trying to tell you for a lot longer than that, but I didn’t - I didn’t understand what I was feeling. And then you just, fuckin’, snipe me by confessing _your_ love, which is just unfair.”

He turns over Richie’s hand, and Richie notices that his hands are trembling, and that tiny detail grounds him. It’s Eddie. Eddie, right in front of him, absolutely terrified but being brave again. He presses a kiss right to Richie’s wrist, and Richie wonders if he can feel the blood thrumming underneath, fast fast fast. His legs are going to turn to jelly. 

“God,” he says. “Your fuckin’ hands, Richie.” 

“Oh my God,” Richie says, delirious. Eddie’s eyes flick back up to his, and they’re big and brown and filled up with so much concentrated _want_ that Richie forgets how to breathe. 

“I love you,” Eddie says again. “Not as a friend. I mean, that too. But I’m - I’m in love with you.” 

Richie opens his mouth to say something, anything, but he bursts into tears instead. 

“Jesus, Richie,” Eddie says. “Warn a guy.” 

Richie laughs, wet. “Eddie, I - fuck, are you serious? I can’t believe you’re serious.” 

“I’m serious, I love you.” 

“Can you say it again?” 

Eddie grins, reaching up to hold Richie’s face in his hands. “I love you.” 

“Motherfucker!” Richie laughs. “I love _you!_ ” 

“I know!” Eddie shouts. “I love _you_ , dumbass!” 

“I love _you!_ ” Richie shouts back. 

“Jesus Christ,” Eddie says, looking at Richie with something like wonder. “I can’t believe I’m gonna kiss you in this disgusting fucking alley.” 

“You - you’re - you -”

“Oh my God,” Eddie says. “I have to do everything myself, huh?” 

“Yeah,” Richie says, breathless. 

He pulls Richie down and presses his lips to his, hard, like he’s trying to talk without saying anything. And he is, Richie realizes, because he’s saying the same thing, back. _I love you. I mean it. I’m here, and I’m not going anywhere._ Richie lets out a little sound that he immediately regrets making, but he feels Eddie smile into the kiss and his body floods with warmth, with heady, unbelievable delight. He cards his fingers through Eddie’s hair, cradles the back of his head, and kisses him back like his fucking life depends on it. 

He’s loved him for so long, but that’s not what Richie’s thinking about as Eddie sighs into his mouth, pulls at his bottom lip with his teeth in a way that makes Richie feel like he’s about to go catatonic. _He loves me_ , Richie thinks. _He loves me? He loves me! What the fuck. What the fuck. What the fuck_. And then Eddie’s lips part, and he’s no longer thinking anything at all. 

Richie feels like he’s on fire, and dying, and maybe also coming back to life. His blood is singing in his veins. He’s never kissed anyone like this. He’s tried to. But none of them have been Eddie. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s backed them into the wall until Eddie hits the brick, his head knocking back for a second, and he pulls away long enough to hiss out an annoyed, “Ow, fuck, dude.” 

“You’re calling me _dude_ when we’re making out?” Richie asks. They’re both breathing hard, grinning at each other. “You gonna call me _man_ when we have sex? _Buddy?_ ” 

“I’m gonna call you whatever I want,” Eddie says, and Richie hears the dial-up tone in his brain. 

“Hey, here’s a thought,” Richie says, faux-casual, arms bracketing Eddie’s flushed face. “Let's get the fuck out of here.” 

Eddie bursts out laughing, a raw, full-chested joy, and Richie tips his forehead to rest against Eddie’s, laughing right along with him. 

* * *

“So I take it you’re not actually straight then?” Richie asks when they’re lying in his bed later, curled together. 

“Fuck _off_ , Richie,” Eddie huffs, pushing him away. Richie’s got a bruise on his ass, now, because when they’d made it through the front door and kicked off their shoes, Eddie had said _nice place,_ then jumped right back on him, and when Richie had started kissing his neck, Eddie had said, _Rich, Rich, pick me up,_ and Richie had moved so quickly in an effort to heave Eddie into his arms that he’d slipped on the hardwood and wiped out, both of them falling to the floor. _Richie, I’m going to kill you,_ Eddie said. _But I broke your fall, baby,_ Richie wheezed. 

“I will not,” Richie says, pulling him tight, resting his head on Eddie’s chest and tangling their legs together. He feels Eddie’s arm come around his shoulders, his hand playing with the overgrown hair at the nape of his neck. He tries not to lean into it like a cat, hums contentedly instead. “You love me.” 

“I do,” Eddie says. 

“You have terrible taste,” says Richie, and like everything he says, it’s got the cadence of a joke. 

“Rich,” Eddie says. 

“What?” 

“No I don’t.” 

“Eddie, I’m begging you not to say something sappy right now,” Richie says, squirming. “I have already cried like eight times today.” 

“Is it sappy to tell you that I love your loud, stupid laugh? Or the face you make right before you’re going to tell the most heinous joke in the world?” 

“Yes!” 

“What if I tell you that I love the way you push me to try new shit? Or the way you care about all of us, or make me feel, like… secure, but not trapped.” 

“You’re too good for me, Eddie,” Richie says, softly. 

“I’m a neurotic little bastard, Richie, remember?” Eddie says. “There’s something wrong with you.” 

“Finally, we agree.” 

“We’re both fucked up, Richie,” he says. “Maybe that’s why this is gonna work.” 

“You’re very confident, Edward.” 

“I will kick you out of bed if you do a Voice right now.” 

“No, you won’t! Because you love me!” 

“I will exile you. Briefly.”

“Do you wanna hear the talking rat from the series, Eds?” He pitches his voice down to the gravelly rumble. “Hey, Eddie. I love you, sweetie pie.” 

“Stop!” 

“Cutie patootie. Schmoopy poo.” 

“Richie I will _kill_ you. You know I know how to fuckin’ do it. I’d dissolve your body in acid and they’d never fuckin’ figure out what happened, because I’d clean this place from top to bottom.” 

Richie kisses him, sloppy and enthusiastic. “I know you would, baby.” 

Eddie’s quiet, his face pinched. 

“Oh? Nothing to say about _baby?_ ” 

“Shut up, Rich.” 

“Eddie, baby!” 

“Fine,” Eddie says. Even in the dim light of the bedside lamp, Richie can tell he’s blushing all the way down his chest. “Fine, I always kind of liked it when you called me that.” 

“ _Babyyyyyy_ ,” Richie croons. “My _loooooooove!_ ” 

Eddie covers his face with his hands. 

“No, no, I have to see that pretty face, Eddie, baby. Oh. Oh, hold on. I have an idea, let’s out-sap Stan and Patty. It’ll be insufferable. I heard him call her _babylove_ one time and it’s probably the grossest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

“Do you ever stop talking.” 

“Okay, that is _rich_ coming from you.” 

“Your nickname is literally Trashmouth!” 

“Eddie, one time I told you I was just going to cook the raw chicken I dropped on the floor, and you talked about salmonella for _twenty-four minutes_ without even stopping to breathe.” 

“No I did not.” 

“You did! I timed you!” 

“Alright, smartass. Maybe we should both shut up, now.” 

“Make me.” 

“God, Richie, that is _such_ a corny line.” Eddie grins, and the corners of his eyes scrunch up, and they’re literally _sparkling_ when he looks at Richie like this, like he’d hang the moon for him. Like he’d kill for him. Like he’d die for him. 

He’ll never have to. They’ve got all the time in the world. 

Richie grins back and kisses him again. 

* * *

As it turns out, Eddie has packed six pairs of underwear, a pair of thermal leggings, a pair of workout shorts and three ugly polo shirts. He’d forgotten his toothbrush in his rush, which makes Richie giddy. 

“You were so horny for me you forgot about _dental care_ , Eddie?” Richie grins. 

“It was fucking _romantic_ , Richie, I pulled the romantic move of the _century!_ And if you don’t have an extra toothbrush here, _in its original packaging_ , you are driving to CVS to get one for me.” 

“I’ll do it, my love,” Richie says, kneeling dramatically. 

“Get up, dumbass.” 

“I’ll lay down my life for you. I’ll get us a joint burial plot. Slay a dragon for you. Drive all the way to the CVS in my shitty sweatpants to pick out the perfect toothbrush for your perfect gums.” 

“Stupid,” Eddie says, fondly, and pushes him back, straddles his lap, and kisses him senseless.

Richie finally gets a good look at Eddie’s _funny socks_ , too, which turn out to have little avocados all over them. 

“These are so cute, Eddie Spaghetti,” Richie says. “Almost as cute as you.” 

“Shut up, Richie,” Eddie says, but he’s blushing. Richie can’t believe that he has the power to make that happen. It’s a miracle. 

Eddie doesn’t end up wearing anything he packed, anyway, except the shorts; he borrows one of Richie’s old t-shirts, and Richie feels like he’s going to pass out when he sees it on him. He doesn’t know how he got this lucky, but maybe all of it was worth it if this was where he ended up in the end. 

They sit on opposite sides of the couch to watch a movie while they eat breakfast, feet in each other’s laps. _Breakfast_ is not at all the right word, since at this point it’s almost 1pm. Richie does not care. Eddie had commandeered one of Richie’s skillets to bake them what _he_ had called a “German Apple Pancake,” but Richie had Googled it and found, to his absolute delight, that it was called an _Apple Dutch Baby_. 

Eddie’s still working on his when Richie finishes eating, so Richie just watches him watch the screen, because he can, now. He looks at Eddie’s eyelashes, the bridge of his nose, the gash of the scar across his cheek, still red and raised. 

Eddie feels him looking and glances over, raising his eyebrows. “What?” he asks, mouth full of pancake. 

“Nothin’,” Richie says, smiling. He holds Eddie’s foot in his hand, kisses his anklebone softly, the dip beside his tendon. Eddie softens. 

“You got a weird foot thing, Tozier?” he asks. 

Richie barks out a laugh. “Nah,” he says, lightly. “Just a you thing.” 

Eddie looks at him so seriously that for a second, he’s worried he’s said something wrong, but then he puts down his food, leaning forward to rest his arms on Richie’s knees. 

“Hey,” Eddie says. 

“Hey,” Richie parrots. 

“I don’t, uh - I don’t know what I’m doing,” he starts, and Richie knows him well enough to know that there’s more coming, so he sits tight and waits for it. “The only relationship I ever had happened because I was terrified there was something wrong with me. So I don’t want to like, rush things, or fuck things up here. But -” 

“But?”

“But, I’m sick of living across the country from you! How much of your insane, freak-out love confession do you remember, Richie?” 

“Hey!” 

“Because I remember that you said _I want to be with you all the time_.” 

“Oh, yeah. That sounds about right.” 

“I don’t want to keep doing this over the phone, Rich,” Eddie says, searching Richie’s face with those doe eyes. “I want - I want to watch movies with you on the same couch. I want to cook in the same kitchen, and sleep in the same bed. I want to come home to you.” 

“God,” Richie says. _Home_ echoes in his head, in his chest. And it doesn’t matter where that is, he realizes. He can go back to New York with Eddie, to the museum and the romcom cafes, tease him about ordering food like Meg Ryan. Eddie can come here, fill in the empty spaces of his house, turn it into a place he actually wants to be. They can go somewhere else, together. Maybe Atlanta, next door to Stan and Patty. Hawaii. New Delhi. It doesn’t matter. 

He shifts on the couch so Eddie has room crawl under his arm, press himself into his side, under his chin. “Yeah,” he says, breathlessly. “Come home, then.”

Eddie does. 

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @ [theparadigmshifts](https://theparadigmshifts.tumblr.com/) or on twitter @ [twomustards](https://twitter.com/twomustards/)
> 
> (title from fleetwood mac’s “everywhere”)


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